The representative men of the New Testament

THIS BOOK

IS FROM

THE LIBRARY OF

Rev. James Leach

THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF
THE NEW TESTAMENT

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from

University of Toronto

http://www.archive.org/details/representativemOOmath

THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

BY

GEORGE MATHESON
D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E.

HODDER & STOUGHTON

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COFTHIGHT, 1905

iy A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON

DEC 6 1967

yh

^TY or T0«2*;

Printed in United States of America

PREFACE

I HAVE lately published two volumes dealing
with the representative men of the Old Testa-
ment— the men who therein represent sections
of universal humanity. They embraced a series
of studies neither historical nor critical, but
mental. I imagined myself standing in a gal-
lery looking at a collection of portraits, and
setting myself to analyse these as they are de-
lineated. The aim was to take them just as
they are presented to us, and, without inquiring
whence or how they come, to find the special
thought which each reveals. The kindly recep-
tion of the effort has emboldened me to issue a
similar volume of New Testament representa-
tives. Strictly speaking, the new gallery is
not a continuation of the old. The old exhib-
its phases of character; the new, revolutions
of character. Nevertheless, in the latter as
much as in the former, we expect to find that

VI

PREFACE

each portrait embodies a distinct thought; and
it is this thought which we seek for. The
studies are again mental —not critical nor
historical. We take the figures as they stand
before us. We simply put one question : As-
suming the authenticity of the narratives and
letters, what is the message which each life
brings.? About the historical character of the
portraits, I have myself no doubt ; but it will be
admitted by all schools that, if revelation there
be, it must ultimately lie in the thought. I
have only to add that, as in the previous vol-
umes, I have given the book a semi-devotional
aspect by closing each chapter with a short
invocation or prayer.

G. M.

Edinburgh, 1905.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. Introduction, ....
II. John the Expanded, .

III. John the Self-Surrendered, .

IV. Nathanael the Invigorated, .
V. Peter the Emboldened, .

VI. NiCODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED,

VII. Thomas the Convinced,
VIII. Philip the Disillusioned,
IX. Matthew the Exalted, .
X. Zaccheus the Conscious-Struck,
XI. James the Softened, .
XII. Barnabas the Chastened,

XIII. Mark the Steadied, .

XIV. Cornelius* the Transplanted,
XV. Timothy the Disciplined,

XVI. Paul the Illuminated,

PAGE

I

24

45

67

88
109
131
153
175
196
217

239
262
28s

307
329

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

There are moments in the history of this world
which may be called moments of ingathering.
Their mission is to collect the experiences of
the past and bind them into unity. The most
striking of all such moments is the advent of
Christ. To the men who witnessed that advent
it presented an appearance which they have de-
scribed by one word, 'fulness. ' In the heart of
the Roman Empire there stood forth a man
who resembled in His nature nothing so much
as that empire itself. Rome was not a country
of the earth ; she was a country that had become
the earth. She had gathered into her bosom
the once separate lands and bound them by
a silver chain; she represented to the view
of the spectator not a nation, but the human

race. So was it with the man Christ Jesus.
I

2 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

He was a mirror of that empire into which He
was born. If Rome united in her constitution
all dominions and powers, Jesus united in His
person all types of character. The rivers of
every land had run into this human sea. The
earnestness of Judah was there; the buoyancy
of Greece was there; the mysticism of India
was there ; the practicalness of China was there ;
the legal acumen of Rome herself was there.
There dwelt the self-restraint of the Stoic, the
easy mind of the Epicurean, the winged imagina-
tion of the Platonist. There repose side by side
things which naturally fly apart — the simplicity
of Galilee and the subtlety of Jerusalem, the
gravity of the East and the sparkle of the West,
the devotion of the Brahman to the soul, and
that care for the wants of the body which con-
stitutes the essence of the European life.

If you wish to see the fulness of the life of
Christ just put to yourself one question. Re-
tracing the steps through that Gallery of the Old
Testament which we have traversed, and taking
at random any great quality expressed by any
figure, simply ask yourself. Is not this equally

INTRODUCTION 3

represented in the life of Jesus? Has Enoch a
vision of immortality ; Christ professes to reveal
life eternal. Is Noah a preacher of righteousness ;
Christ calls sinners to repentance. Has Abra-
ham a dream of universal empire; Christ claims
to found a kingdom of God. Does Isaac rep-
resent home-life; so does Christ at Bethany.
Does Jacob aspire to a priesthood ; Christ offers
Himself for a world's sin. Is Moses the law-
giver on Sinai ; Christ is the law-giver on Her-
mon. Is David chivalrous to his foes; Christ
forgives His enemies. I do not know a phase of
Old Testament heroism which has not been re-
produced in the Picture of Jesus. The calm wis-
dom of Solomon is here, side by side with the
flashing of Elijah's fire. The fine courtesy of
Boaz is here, hand in hand with Elisha's denuncia-
tion of wrong. The daring fearlessness of Daniel
is here, blended in equal measure with Job's pa-
tient endurance. The humanitarian sweep of
Isaiah is here, but along with it there is some-
thing which such universal sympathy is apt to
exclude — the capacity for individual friendship
which marks the soul of Jonathan.

4 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

It seems to me that such a mode of experi-
menting on the Sacred Gallery would be a real
test of ' the fulness of Him that filleth all in
all.' One who was almost a contemporary of
the Galilean ministry speaks of Christ as des-
tined in the future to gather all things to Him-
self. But, from an artistic point of view, this
gathering was already completed. The Por-
trait of Jesus is not the representative of a
phase of humanity; it is humanity itself. He
unites in one face and form the faces and forms
of the whole past Gallery. He represents no
special quality; He expresses all qualities and
He expresses all specially — in a pronounced
degree. It is written, ' When the fulness
of the time was come God sent His Son.*
The fulness of the time was the time for ful-
ness. It was the age when the rivers were to
be ripe for being gathered into the sea, when
the planets were to be ready for incorporation
in the solar beam. The human side of Chris-
tianity was to be not the revelation of a man,
but the revelation of Man. I read in the Book of
Genesis that * in the beginning God created the

INTRODUCTION 5

heavens and the earth ' — that the first thing on
which He gazed was not a part but the whole.
So has it been with the genesis of Christianity.
The first thing which appeared to the eye of
the spectator was its entire heaven and its en-
tire earth. Future years would exhibit the
separate items — sun, moon, and star — herb,
plant, and tree. But the vtoming of Chris-
tianity was the union of all things. All gifts
and graces were embraced in a single life — the
man Christ Jesus. The colours of that life,
which one day were to be distributed among
different flowers, were beheld at first concen-
trated in a rainbow. The garment which to-
morrow was to be parted among many bore
to-day the aspect of a single robe whose rich-
ness enwrapped one human spirit, and whose
folds were covering one individual form.

In the primitive stage of village life we
commonly find all commodities embraced in a
single store. People go there for the most
unlike things — daily food, medicine, millinery,
house - letting, carriage - driving, registration,
banking, the offices of the smith and the car-

6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

penter — perhaps even of the lawyer and the
preacher. The time will come when each of
these will form its separate craft. But in the
primitive village they are apt to be vested in a
single life — a life of which we might say, in
adaptation of the words of Scripture, ' of its
fulness have we all received.' Now, this is
precisely the case of primitive Christianity.
All its varied glories which one day are to be
disseminated are heaped up in a single soul.
Like the nebular fire-cloud, it holds the fulness
of all things. There sleeps the summary of the
past; there lies the germ of the future. Ex-
periences the most diverse are there. The un-
canonical Melchisedek and the priestly Aaron,
the strong Ishmael and the tender Abel, the
optimistic Joseph and the sad Jeremiah, the
child Samuel and the manly Joshua, the expec-
tant Caleb and the retrospective Hezekiah, the
dependent Mephibosheth and the all-conquering
Gideon — they each rest there. It would seem as
if the river of Paradise had for a moment gath-
ered back into her bosom those streams from
which she had parted, and revealed within the

INTRODUCTION 7

compass of one garden the manifold grace of
God. Christianity began where all life begins —
in a single cell — enfolding within the walls of
a seemingly insignificant dwelling the nucleus
of a new heaven and a new earth.

And now I come to a crucial question. I hear
the reader say : ' If this Portrait of Jesus has
gathered up the past, and if the future is to be
simply a repetition of its glories, why do you
speak of new representative men ! Nay, on such
a principle, why should you even speak of a New
Testament! What is new about it! You have
shown in the Old Gallery every conceivable
quality depicted that can belong to a human
soul. You show at the opening of the Chris-
tian dispensation these qualities united in a single
life. You tell us that in the coming section of
the Gallery the qualities thus united are again
to be distributed in separate individual por-
traits. In such a process where is there any room
for novelty ! Is it not simply a repetition of old
qualities ! Do we not get out of the box exactly
what we put in ! Has the Old Testament
Gallery left any phase of mind without a rec-

8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

ord ! How shall we distinguish between the fire
of an Elijah and the fire of a Peter! How
shall we discriminate between the unselfishness
of an Abraham and the unselfishness of a Paul !
How shall we draw the line between the friend-
ship of a Jonathan and the friendship of a John ! '
These are crucial questions, and they -are perti-
nent questions. They await every man who
attempts to deal with the representative men of
the Bible. If Christ is at once the flower of the
past and the bud of the future, then the qual-
ities of the future must be simply the qualities
of the past. And if it be so, is not our prog-
ress merely a circle, our development only a
dream ! It seems a misnomer to speak of ' the
new man ' — to say that if a man is in Christ he
is ' a new creature. ' Where is the novelty if I
have simply climbed the wall to see the fields
of childhood! Would it not be more correct to
reverse the words of Paul and say, *To be in
Christ is to retrace our yesterday; new things
have passed away and all things have become
old'!
But let us look deeper and this impression it-

INTRODUCTION 9

self will pass away. What is the account which
the New Testament Gallery gives of its own de-
velopment?— by that it ought to be judged, by
that it should stand or fall. Now, it so hap-
pens that a spectator of this gallery has given us
a very clear view of what in his opinion its fig-
ures were meant to represent. He says, * It was
worthy of Him of whom are all things and to
whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto
glory, to make the captain of their salvation per-
fect through sufferings.' Here, by the glance
of one piercing eye, is the nature of the New
Gallery revealed! It is not a new assemblage
of qualities ; it is a new mode of acquiring them.
In the old dispensation these qualities were the
gifts of Nature. Men were born with them;
they were the native soil of the heart. They
came to each soul as naturally as air comeSj as
food comes, as pastime comes. But in the new
dispensation — in the section of the Gallery
which was about to open, there was to be a
change of ground. The qualities which had been
native to the soul were to become the fruit
of struggle. Men were no longer to be born

lo THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

with them; they were to win them — to attain
them through conflict, to reach them by suffer-
ing. The difference between the Old Gallery
and the New is the difference between tempera-
ment and grace; temperament is a planting,
grace is a supplanting. Joseph is an optimist
and Peter is an optimist; but the optimism of
Joseph is very different from the optimism of
Peter. Joseph was hopeful from disposition —
he found the flowers in his cradle and he trea-
sured them in his heart; Peter was hopeful as
the result of experience — he began life amid the
briars and he transformed them into flowers.
This is a typical instance. It expresses in a
single sentence my whole view of the difference
between the New Gallery and the Old. In com-
ing to Christ we are coming to the winepress.
We are approaching a transforming process.
We are entering upon a stage in which char
acter is to be built, not bom. We are coming to
a period in which the wild flower is to give place
to the flower of cultivation, and where a king-
dom which belonged to hereditary transmission
is to be won by the power of the sword.

INTRODUCTION ii

Here, then, is the nature of the New Evangel
— perfection through suffering — the attainment
of a quality as the result of struggle. It would
not in the least minimise the difference between
the two Galleries if you could prove that the gen-
tleness of Ruth was as perfect as the gentleness
of John. The gentleness of Ruth originates in
a different source from the gentleness of John.
The former was a birthright; the latter was a
conquest. The former was a gift of nature;
the latter was a trophy of grace. The former
was a spontaneous breath of the morning; the
latter was a delicious fragrance which had been
gathered in the afternoon. Christianity is per-
fection through suffering, excellence through
suffering. Even where its fruits are less beau-
tiful than the fruits of Judaism, they are more
precious; they can stand the storm. Judaism
shrank from the storm ; its virtues tended to
wither before the blast. But the virtues of Chris-
tianity were to be brought upon the blast. They
were to come to the soul on the wings of the
wind. They were to be the product not of
spring but of autumn, not of hereditary bias

12 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

but of stem experience. Christian faith de-
manded a cloud. Christian courage demanded
a fear. Christian love demanded an impedi-
ment. Christian peace demanded a struggle.
Christian purity demanded a meeting with the
tempter in the wilderness.

Now, in the light of this contrast, I shall look
at the New Testament Gallery from a different
standpoint to that from which I surveyed the
Old. In the previous volumes each portrait
was accompanied by an adjective expressing its
quality. I shall now assign to each portrait,
not a descriptive adjective, but a descriptive
verb — a verb indicating the particular influence
which has been exerted over the man and which
has transformed the man. I should say that in
this world there are always the two classes — the
men represented by the adjective, and the men
represented by the verb; the one are the sons
of nature, the other the sons of grace. The
Old Gallery represents the first; upon the face
of its portraits is stamped the impress of a qual-
ity. But the New Gallery opens another sphere.
Here the faces of the men reveal, not the quality,

. INTRODUCTION 13

but the action. The stamp which distinguishes
these is not so much a possession as a struggle.
We behold some of them advancing to the bat-
tle, some in the heat of the fight, some return-
ing from victory; but all equally give the im-
pression of a life being moulded by conflict
The watchword of this gallery is, ' Ye must be-
come as little children. ' The stress lies not on
the word * children ' but on the word * become. '
Childhood is a natural possession of all men,
and its flowers may grow in every field. But
if childhood be lost and won again, it is no longer
a mere gift of nature ; it is a triumph of grace.
It is a pearl of great price from the simple fact
that a price is paid for it, a sacrifice made for
it. To be a guileless man under the fig-tree
may be beautiful, but it is the beauty of a star ;
to be guileless amid the haunts of Nazareth, is
the indication of a higher force of character —
it is the beauty of a soul.

It may seem a strange thing that the struggle
should have come in an age of peace. The dawn
of Christianity was on a summer morning. It
came when the political sky was clear. The

14 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

songs of Bethlehem that proclaimed goodwill
among men had already in a measure been real-
ised. The earlier ages had been times of tur-
bulence; the immediately succeeding ages were
to be times of turbulence again. But this was a
calm between two whirlwinds — short-lived, but
very real. Men for an hour had beat their
swords into ploughshares and their spears into
pruning-hooks, and it seemed to many as if they
would learn the art of war no more. Such was
the age into which Christ was born. Is it not a
singular thing that this, of all times, should have
been the day of moral struggle — the day when
the flowers of the heart did not spring spon-
taneously ! We should have expected that the
years of war would have been the years of moral
crisis — that the hours of danger and terror and
sword would have been the hours in which the
inward lives of men would have undergone their
vital change.

Yet, in this expectation, I think we are guided
by an erroneous idea. Is it the case that the
times of outward war are the times of inward
conflict .•* I do not think so. To my mind, the

INTRODUCTION 15

struggles of the soul have always been deepest
in the ages of peace. The times of war leave
no leisure for looking within. They bring forth
brilliant qualities, but they bring them forth with-
out tillage, and they maintain them without the
consciousness of their possessor. The times of
physical danger are like the mists in the Book
of Genesis which were sent up to water the
ground. They indeed water the ground, but
they are apt to hide the process of their own
working. Before a man can look into himself,
you must clear away the outward mist. Danger
is unfavourable to introspection ; even a boy at
school will forget his answer if you hold the rod
over him. The truth must be spoken : Peace,
and not war, is the vivifier of this world. I
used to think it an anticlimax when I read the
prophet's longing for the day when the soldier
should become a ploughman ; but that was be-
cause I thought the age of the soldier was the
age of deeper evolution. I know better now.
The real struggle of life begins when the mind is
at leisure from its surroundings. It is when a
man rests from his outward troubles that he be-

1 6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

gins to strive with himself. Christ said that He
came not to send peace, but a sword. Yes ; and
He sent the inward sword just because it was
a time of outward peace. Had Caesar been at
war with the world Christ could never have
waged war in the soul. The war in the soul
demands a summer day — a day in which we are
not molested from without. Christ tells His
followers to pray that their flight be not in the
winter, and He says well. Winter drives back
into the old path and arrests the upward ten-
dency. The misfortunes of life require all our
energies for themselves; to turn these energies
inward we need a voice upon the outward sea,
'Peace, be still!'

But there is a second characteristic of this
coming Christian age which is well worthy of
attention. Not only is it to be a period of in-
ward transformation but of rapid transforma-
tion. This quality of the Messianic age had
been anticipated by far-seeing minds. I do not
think we attach the real meaning to the pro-
phetic words of the later Isaiah, 'I the Lord
will hasten it in its time. ' We commonly under-

INTRODUCTION 17

stand the saying to mean that the time inter-
vening till the Messiah comes will be short. To
my mind, that is not what the Prophet desires
to say. I understand him to proclaim his convic-
tion that after the Messiah has come things will
move at a double-quick march. The idea is, not
that the coming of the kingdom will be acceler-
ated, but that, when the kingdom has actually
arisen, there will be times of acceleration. It
is equivalent to saying, * In the days of the Mes-
siah God will cause all things to travel at a rapid
pace.* Now, we all know that there are times
of acceleration in the history of this world —
times in which, to use a Bible phrase, a nation is
born in a day. Events to which we looked for-
ward as involving the march of centuries are
seen to spring up in a night. Developments of
character whose completion we predicted for
the end of years are effected by the heat of
a single summer. Lives which we thought
would require a series of incarnations to per-
fect them are made to flower out by one
drastic experience, and the work which nat-
urally would have belonged to days is fin-

i8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

ished and culminated by the pressure of an
hour.

Now, the advent of Christ is one of these
times. It is a season of accelerated movements.
The men of the Old Testament grow; the
men of the New flash. For, what is the specta-
cle which the Christian Gallery reveals.? It is
a series of figures rapidly discarding their original
costume and appearing in a garb of contrary
mould. We catch the momentary glimpse of a
fiery persecutor — it is Saul of Tarsus; we turn
aside for an instant, and, when next we look, we
are in the presence of a son of charity. We see
a man flying from the post of duty because it is
the post of danger — it is Simon Peter ; we avert
our eyes in disgust. The next moment the man
stands before us in an opposite vesture : in-
stead of shunning duty through fear of danger,
he is almost making danger itself a duty. We
behold a rather narrow Churchman, devoted to
externals and eager for ecclesiastical power — it
is John, son of Zebedee. We divert our gaze
for a moment toward other things. By and
by we look again, and lo, the man has lost his

INTRODUCTION 19

formalism, lost his ecclesiasticism, lost his pride,
and is found reclining on the bosom of love !

How shall we account for this? Shall we say
that it is magical? No; there has not been one
step omitted from the process of normal devel-
opment. What has happened is that the develop-
ment has been quickened. The stages of the
process have not been abridged, but they have
been hurried on. The kindling of the flower
has been accelerated by the influence of a spe-
cial atmosphere. What is that atmosphere?
What should we expect it to be? Do we know
of any influence which has a special power of ac-
celerating? Yes — the contact with a great per-
sonality. I do not know of anything in the world
which has such power to hasten the steps of the
mind. A man may live for a whole lifetime
amid the loveliest and grandest scenery the eye
can dwell on, and he may remain at the end as
stolid, as dull, as lethargic as when first he saw
the light. But let that man meet with another
man — a higher man, a man of piercing brain and
potent heart and mesmeric attraction — you will
see in a week an absolutely radical change. The

20 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

eye will glisten, the step will lighten, the face will
brighten ; it will be like the dawning of an inward
day. Nature has lofty thoughts for those who
are already lofty, but she cannot speak down —
cannot address her message to a dormant mind.
This is precisely what a high soul ca7i do. The
higher it is, the easier for that soul to speak
down. The deepest student of a subject will
best educate the novice, and will most quickly
educate the novice. There is no influence so
accelerating as a human influence; one day in
its courts is better than a thousand days in the
courts of visible nature.

And the men of Galilee had come under a hu-
man influence. They had long been under the
influence of inspiring scenery, that is to say, of
scenery which would have inspired cultivated
minds; yet it had failed to move them from
their rustic apathy. But suddenly a mafi ap-
peared ! In the midst of the field there stood
forth an extraordinary presence! We may call
him by what name we will — teacher, preacher,
reformer, philanthropist; his immediate influ-
ence was something distinct from any of these.

INTRODUCTION 21

It was not what he taught, not what he preached,
not what he amended ; it was his creation of the
sense of wonder. Human intelHgence begins
not with an act of understanding, but with the
feeling that there is something which is not un-
derstood. The first step in every upward devel-
opment is the sense of wonder; until that has
come, we are dormant. The earliest power of
Jesus was His waking the men of Galilee to won-
der. He did for these men what the hills could
not do, what the woods could not do, what the
stars could not do; He made them ask ques-
tions. It is the question, not the answer, that
is the note of dawn. My milestones lie in my
mysteries — not in my acquirements. Galilee
struck a new hour when it cried, 'What man-
ner of man is this ! ' It knocked at its first gate
of wonder. It learned for the first time that
there was something it could see and not per-
ceive, something it could hear and not under-
stand. That sense of ignorance was worth all
the knowledge in the world. It was the first
leap out of the darkness, the earliest emergence
into light. The dove had begun to move on the

22 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

face of the waters, and its very unrest suggested
the promise of a new land.

SON of Man, Thou hast the key to the Sec-
ond Gallery — nay. Thou art the key! In
Thee alone I learn the secret of the world's un-
rest. Thou Thyself art the secret. We speak
of the waters being stilled by Thy coming ; nay,
it was Thy coming that stirred the waters.
The faces of the New Gallery through which
I am to pass are all the faces of struggling men ;
but their struggle comes from light, not dark-
ness; they have seen Thee! They have lost
their primitive satisfaction. There is a far
look-out in the eyes, as if they sought some-
thing not here, as if they heard the murmuring
of a distant sea. It is because they have seen
Thee! Thy glory has left a cloud upon the
common day. The lily of the field is less fair.
The song of the bird is less buoyant. The scent
of the hay is less sweet. The blue of the sky is
less pure. The bosom of the sea is less calm.
It is all from sight of Thee! Thy sheen has
thrown all things into shade. Thy radiance has

INTRODUCTION 23

broken their rest. Thy beauty has tarnished
their beam. Thy sweetness has blunted their
savour. They have faded in front of Thy flow-
er; they have vanished in touch of Thy voice;
they have paled in the power of Thy presence;
they have melted in the blaze of Thy music.
The men of this New Gallery are less content
with wood and field ; but it is because their eyes
have gazed on a higher loveliness — the bright-
ness of Thy face !

CHAPTER II

JOHN THE EXPANDED

On the threshold of the New Gallery we are
met by a portentous figure popularly known as
John the Baptist. He was the earliest product
of the influence of that Great Light which was
about to transform the world. In order of time
he is the first Christian. He discerned the great-
ness of Jesus when, outwardly, Jesus was not
great. He was the earliest who fixed his eyes
upon the miracle of Christ's character. Nay,
I am disposed to go further; with the excep-
tion, I think, of Thomas, he is probably the only
man of the primitive band who was originally
attracted to Jesus by the beauty of His moral
nature alone. Neither Peter nor James nor
the other John nor Andrew nor Philip nor Na-
thanael seems to have been at first so attracted ;

they embraced the hope of a physical Messiah.
24

JOHN THE EXPANDED 25

But this man cried, ' Behold the Lamb of God ! '
It was indeed a voice crying in the wilderness.
There were very few in the age of Jesus who
could appreciate the miracle of a sinless life.
Show them a wonderful boy in the home of Naz-
areth— a boy who can tell thoughts before they
are spoken, calculate figures as soon as they
are stated, get answers to prayers the instant
they are offered — the home of Nazareth will be
thronged to suffocation. But tell them that with-
in that house there lives a thoroughly good child,
a child of unique goodness — tell them that
through all the years of his consciousness he
has never been known to depart from a lamblike
gentleness, never been seen to deviate from a
pure affection, never been observed to waver in
an unselfish spirit — you will attract no crowd
around the cottage door. The traveller will
pause not to wonder, the spectator will wait not
to verify ; it will seem to the world an ordinary,
a commonplace thing.

It is the glory of John the Baptist that he per-
ceived the miracle of Nazareth. This man saw
the wonder precisely in the one spot where his

26 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

contemporaries could see nothing. Alone of
all the men in the New Gallery this man is first
attracted and dominated by that life of Christ
which preceded outward wonders — His life in the
home. He had seen no outpouring of the wine
at Cana. He had beheld no cleansing of the
temple at Jerusalem. He had witnessed no heal-
ing at the pool of Bethesda. He had experi-
enced no glimmer of glory on the Mount of
Transfiguration. He had not even listened to
the words of wisdom which have immortalised
the Hill of Hermon. His vision was only of
the child.' The spirit of Jesus had to him taken
the form of a dove. The kingdom of Christ
which he had seen was the kingdom over Him-
self in the nursery. He had marked Him out
as the future Messiah on altogether unique
grounds. He had demanded a test that could
be fulfilled in Nazareth. He had asked no prod-
igies. He had exacted no feats of prowess. He
had required no evidence of supernatural knowl-
edge. He had asked sinlessness — a blameless

■ He seems, on account of his desert life, to have lost
sight of Him in His manhood ; see John i. 33.

JOHN THE EXPANDED 27

record in the cottage home. By His sustaining
of that test, by His ability to pass through that
ordeal, the Christ of the Baptist should stand or
fall.

I have laid great stress on this point because,
if I am not mistaken, we are often prone to take
an erroneous view of John the Baptist. We
figure a wild man of the woods, half savage and
wholly physical — a man whose Christ was of
the earth earthy, whose hopes were centred on
an outward glory, whose cry was for the carnal,
whose faith was in the flesh. We think of him
with a kindly patronage — as wonderfully good
for the dawn. We insist on allowance being
made for him. It would be too bad, we say, to
compare his rise with the rising of such lights
as Peter and the sons of Zebedee. These men
saw the Christ full-grown ; this man had only
the tradition of His NazaretJi ; how can we
expect the summer from the spring, why look
to dawn for the brightness of the day !

Now, on such an opinion the view I have been
advocating falls like a clap of thunder. For, ac-
cording to my reading of John the Baptist, this

28 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

representative of the earliest Christianity is the
least primitive of all the Christians. So far
from contrasting unfavourably with the apostles,
he actually begins where they end. The latest
word of these apostles is not the outward miracle
but the blameless life; it may be said of every
one of them that to their autumn years *the
Lamb is all the glory.' But that can be said
of the Baptist's spring. He antedated their
experience. While they were hunting after a
sign of the flesh, he was pursuing a sign of the
spirit. While they sought an eagle, he followed
the track of a dove. While they waited for the
strength of a lion, he placed all his hopes in the
spotlessness of a lamb.

The truth is, the original defect of John the
Baptist was of exactly the opposite nature to
that commonly attributed to him. So far from
beginning as a wild man of the woods, the thing
he lacked was just the forest freedom. In his
morning he was no son of liberty. He had the
most exalted view of what it is to be a Christian
— a more exalted view than any of his contempo-
raries; but for that very reason he would make

JOHN THE EXPANDED 29

no allowances. He was a red-hot revivalist,
and his revivalism admitted no compromise.
What he required was not enlightenment; it
was expansion. Strange as it may seem, I
hold that what all religious youth requires is
not enlightenment but expansion. We think of
youth as the bird of the wilderness flying reck-
less from bough to bough and destined, to get its
wings clipped in the zenith of the day. That is
a very good picture of physical youth, but it is
not religious youth. Religious youth has exact-
ly the opposite development. It is no bird of the
wilderness ; it is afraid to fly. It is too intense
to be broad; it settles on a branch and dwells
there. It sees the fire burning in a single bush ;
it hears the voice calling from only one tree.
Its wings may be expected to-morrow, but its
weights are for to-day. Its path is a narrow
path, its view is a limited view; it sees through
a glass darkly and it thinks it sees in full.

There are, in my opinion, two characteristics
of the narrowness of religious youth, and they
are both found in this figure of the Baptist. The
first I would describe as the inability to wait, in

30 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

other words, a tendency to see the future with-
out intermediate view. This man points to his
Christ and cries, 'His fan is in His hand!'—
ready to be used. Youth habitually scorns the
intermediate. It is commonly reckoned a proof
of its expansiveness. In truth it is the reverse ;
it is its inability to fix the eye on any point but
one. When a child cries, 'Not to-morrow, nor
to-morrow, nor to-morrow, but the next day!'
what does it mean.^ It is really making an at-
tempt to annihilate from its thought the interme-
diate days as if they were so much useless lum-
ber. That little word 'not' is equivalent to a
suppression. It declares that the days between
Monday and Friday are to be discounted, ig-
nored, put on one side, and that the string of
hope should draw the ends so close together as
to prevent the impression of anything interme-
diate at all.

And this is the initial position of John the
Baptist. He has a child's inability to wait. His
conception of the Messiah is beautiful beyond his
time; but his conception of the Messiah's fan
is premature. When the hills look too near,

JOHN THE EXPANDED 31

there will be rain. I am afraidt his great revival
preacher is preparing for himself a harvest of
tears. It is grandly exciting, no doubt, to see
the masses vibrating to the message that the fan
is already in the hand. But the fan is in reality
not yet within the grasp of the Christ. To the
eye of the Baptist the hills look wonderfully
near, but the deception will ere long reveal itself.
When he stands in the midst of the crowd and
cries, ' Behold the Lamb of God ! ' he is on
strong and trenchant ground ; but when he pre-
dicts the immediate diffusion of the Lamb's
purity, he is skating on thin ice. His hearers
may be enraptured to-day, but they will be anx-
ious to-morrow and downcast the day after.
The Baptist has promised too much. He has
held up the Messiah's winnowing fan in the
light of the coming Sabbath — has held it so as
to exclude the light of all intermediate days.
He has excluded that light from himself as much
as from his hearers. He has taken the child's
leap, that leap which indicates not breadth but
narrowness — the exclusive concentration of the
eye upon the lamp farthest away.

32 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

But there is a second characteristic of religious
youth, and it also is exemplified in this great re-
vival preacher. Religious youth is distinctly
uncompromising. It never admits the possibil-
ity of any shades of opinion. A thing is either
white or black, good or bad, lovely or de-
formed. This is a tendency, indeed, pertaining
more or less to childhood in general. The aver-
age child has no degrees in his love. His heart
is a clock where only two hours are indicated
— twelve noon and twelve midnight. Ask if
he likes any one; you will get an unqualified
yes or no. We are in the habit of adducing this
as evidence of the child's outspokenness. But
in truth the problem lies, not in speaking out,
nor, for that matter, in speaking at all. It lies in
the fact that the incipient mind is the imperative
mind. I do not think it is a mark of strength,
but the reverse; it indicates, not breadth, but
narrowness. It implies a limit in judgment, as
the previous tendency implied a limit in imag-
ination. It is a mark of crudeness and non-
development; yet it is capable of existing side
by side with the most exalted idea of purity.

JOHN THE EXPANDED 33

Now, the preacher on the banks of Jordan
revealed in pronounced colours this uncompro-
mising spirit of youth. He denied the interme-
diate shades between night and day. Not only
was the Messiah's fan already in the hand; it
was to be used drastically. ' He will thoroughly
purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the
garner; but He will burn up the chaff with un-
quenchable fire.' The Baptist is in the same po-
sition as the servants of Christ's parable. They
wanted to consume the tares immediately,
'Wilt Thou that we go and gather them up?*
You will remerr>ber the answer was, No ; and you
will remember why — 'Lest while ye gather up
the tares ye root up also the wheat with them.'
In nothing does the wisdom of Christ shine so
resplendent over the wisdom of John. John
thought there were two sets of men — one good
and the other bad ; to Christ the good and the bad
nestled in one soul. John thought a fire would
do all that was wanted ; Christ feared it might do
more than was wanted. John said, 'If a man
show stubbornness of will, beat it out of him ' ;
Christ cried, 'Not so; you will beat out not

34 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

only the stubbornness but the will itself — will
reduce the man to a state of passive imbecility
where decision is hopeless and choice is im-
possible.' John proposed to kill evil passion by
putting an axe at the root of the tree; Christ
said, 'The root of the tree is not evil passion but
good passion; would you make it impossible to
sin by making it impossible to feel! would you
debar from scenes of badness by debarring from
the sense of sight ! would you cure the tempta-
tion of the heart by making the heart a stone ! '

This, then, is the earliest aspect of John the
Baptist — the fiery preacher of a very high Chris-
tianity— incapable of compromise, intolerant of
middle courses, eager to reduce the outside uni-
verse into two hemispheres — heaven and hell !
Take a parting look at the man ! You will never
see him again in this attitude. Something is
going to happen, the curtain is about to fall.
With all its intolerance, with all its uncompro-
misingness, with all its repelling severity, there
is something in this figure transcendently grand.
As it sways to and fro on the banks of Jordan,
shaken with the pulsations of its own eloquence

JOHN THE EXPANDED 35

■ — as it breaks forth, now in passionate invective,
now in earnest pleading, now in prophetic fer-
vour— I wonder not that the crowds listen and
tremble. It is a soul walking on a narrow plank ;
but on that plank he walks with dauntless foot.
The man speaks with conviction ; and his convic-
tion is his power. Alone of all the world he has
seen the King in His moral beauty — has recog-
nised that lamblike whiteness is better than im-
perial purple. Basking in that fair ideal of a
spotless Christ, he demands a spotless world —
demands it now, here, immediately. If the ac-
ceptance of Christ meant a change of outward
government, men might be allowed to linger;
but the acceptance of Christ meant purity, holi-
ness, goodness — all that lies within a man's own
heart, ready for the waking touch of God. This
was a kingdom that needed no armies nor weap-
ons nor fortresses; why should it not come to-
morrow, to-day, this hour !

So thought, so spake, John Baptist in the
morning. But now, as I have said, the scene is
about to vanish. Even as we gaze, the picture
melts like snow. Jordan suddenly disappears;

36 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the voice of the preacher fades ; the crowd upon
the bank evaporates as a stream of hmehghts,
and, where the hum of life resounded, univer-
sal silence reigns. We are on the borders of a
great tragedy — one of the greatest tragedies in
history. But what is that tragedy.? Perhaps
there are few of us who have realised where con-
sists the dramatic horror of the situation. Ask
a Sunday-school child what was the tragedy that
befell John the Baptist, he will answer without
hesitation, ' In the course of his teaching he de-
nounced an illegal marriage of Herod, who put
him in prison and caused him to be beheaded.'
And yet, that is not the dramatic element in the
case of the Baptist. That was a tragedy to the
man, but not to the preacher, not to the reform-
er, not to the Christian forerunner. WHiat was
the tragedy to Sir Walter Scott ? The loss of his
money .-• Assuredly not; that might happen to
the most undistinguished man. But when Scott
faded in mind, when his powers became para-
lysed, when his right hand lost its cunning and his
mighty brain ceased to be a highway for the na-
tions, then came the real tragedy. It was not

JOHN THE EXPANDED 37

genius parting with money ; it was genius part-
ing with itself.

The Baptist's tragedy was analogous to this.
It was not his prison; it was not his peril; it
was not his martyrdom — it was the fact that he
wavered in his first faith. From the depths of
his dungeon he sends a message to the ideal of
his dreams, 'Art Thou He that should come, or
do we look for another } ' Nothing, to my mind,
in the whole history of the Baptist is half so
tragical as that. And why.^" Because it is the
man parting from his innermost self. It is as
if Shakespeare had lost his passion, as if Tenny-
son had lost his culture, as if Keats had lost his
colouring. If this man had kept his confidence
undimmed we should have looked in vain for the
element of tragedy; not the dungeon, not the
persecution by Herod, not the axe of the heads-
man, could have made the final scene other than
glorious. But when a cloud fell over his inner-
most self, when in the flood he lost sight of the
bow, when his fcrzi/i wavered, when his one
strong and seemingly invincible possession re-
ceived damage on a rock of earth — this is the

38 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

crisis of the drama, this is the tragedy of the
scene !

Has the Gallery, then, here committed a
Ijreach of art? Ought the hero to lose his par-
ticular point of heroism? We can understand
misfortune, struggle, death; these may only
brighten the man's special beauty. But that the
special beauty itself should be falsified, that
the hero should be untrue to his own soul, that
the curtain should fall precisely where his lofty
ideal falls — is that a stroke worthy of artistic en-
thusiasm ! Is it not specially ?^«worthy of that
great Christian art whose aim is not to destroy-
but to fulfil, and which finds its highest glory
when it gathers up the fragments that remain !

In this instance I do not hesitate to answer.
No. I say that nowhere has Christianity been
more optimistic than in allowing the Baptist's
faith to fail. No other stroke would have im-
parted full glory to the picture. What is it that
the Baptist lacks throughout? It is expansion.
His taint is narrowness. His ideal of Christ was
magnificent, unique among his contemporaries.
But he insisted that this ideal should become

JOHN THE EXPANDED 39

the immediate possession of the world. He had
no place for the wavering, no provision for the
stunted, no tenderness for the specially tempted.
What this man needed was charity — a deeper
sympathy with the infirmities of man. And how
was he to get it.^ How is any man to get it.^
I know of only one way — he must be depressed
in his strong point. Touch him in any other
point, and you will fail. But touch him where
he is strong, shake him where he has been im-
movable, and you open the first inlet for the
entrance of human charity. The shaking of
John's faith was a process preparatory to his
spiritual expansion. It prepared him for the an-
swer he was about to receive. He had sent a mes-
sage to Jesus, 'Art Thou He that should come? '
The reply was on the way, and it was virtu-
ally an exhortation to remember human frailty.
Let me try to paraphrase this reply of Jesus.

'John, it is just because I do not follow your
method that I am He that should come. Your
method is a drastic one. You want to begin
by clearing out the chaff. You want me, when
I enter the threshing-floor, to look round and be

40 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

impressed with the absolute purity of all things.
You want me to be able to say, "I see no blind
here, no lame, no leper, no deaf, no dead in tres-
passes and sin, no poor and ignorant requiring to
be preached to; it is ail radiant as a summer
day." But, my friend, when I come into the
threshing-floor, that is not what I want to see.
I wish to see the contrary. I wish to look round
and see in the foreground the very men you have
put out — the blind, the lame, the leper, the deaf,
the spiritually dead, the poor and ignorant. I
would have all these cleansed, but I would have
them cleansed from the inside. I demand not
that the blind should see before they climb the
mountain; I ask not that the lame should leap
ere they enter by the Beautiful Gate. Let there
be no separation between the wheat and the chaff;
gather them both into my garner and let me
meet them there! Bring in Bartimeus; bring
in the man of Bethesda; bring in the typical
Magdalene ; bring in the leper from the tombs !
I shall meet the crowd as they are — unwashed,
uncleansed, unbeautified ; in their rags and
ruin will I give them my hand. '

JOHN THE EXPANDED 41

That is a real paraphrase of the message from
Jesus to John. And remember, when it came to
John it came to a broken-down man — a man
who had been shaken in the sphere of his proud-
est confidence. What a magnificent preparation
for so grand a message ! There was a time when
John would have scorned to let Bartimeus in ; but
now his own eye had become dim. There was a
time when he would have resented the admission
of the man of Bethesda; but now his own feet
had become weary. For the first moment in his
life he felt himself part of that chaff which he had
consigned to everlasting fire. There sprang up
in his soul a fellow-feeling with infirmity. The
ingathering of the wheat ceased to be the mark
of Messianic greatness. To take up tenderly the
withered flower, to plant again the fallen tree,
to bind the heart that had been wounded, to raise
the soul that had been bruised, to give a chance
to the reprobate, to find a fresh start for the
children of a corrupt heredity, to proclaim a new
year in which the darkest life might begin once
more — such was that unique ideal of heroism
which gave to the dungeon of John's closing days

42 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

a light of glory which his brightest morning had
never known!

I think, then, that the grandest period of the
Baptist's life was not the days of his wilder-
ness freedom, but that lonely prison-house from
which he only came forth to die. The hour of
his physical chain was the hour of his mental en-
franchisement. His morning was cribbed, cab-
ined, and confined. He was like a man that
never had an illness. He had no sympathy with
bad health. His besetting weakness was his
robust constitution. He could not make allow-
ance for aches and pains, for reaction and weari-
ness. He needed a special gift from God, and
that special gift was a privation. Nothing but
a privation could set the captive free — could
unbar those gates of sympathy whose closure
made life to him a desert. But at his evening-
time there came that light. It was not the dun-
geon brought it ; it was the shaking of his faith
in his own robustness. That shaking was like
the cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration. It
removed Moses and Elias and revealed Jesus
only. The man of law and the man of fire both

JOHN THE EXPANDED 43

faded from his horizon, and by his side there
stood in undisputed presence the Man of Mercy.
Sinai vanished Hke smoke ; Carmel melted like a
mimic scene ; and, in all the vast expanse, the eye
of the great preacher rested on one solitary hill
— the love -lit brow of Calvary. With such a
vision in his soul the Baptist could afford to die.

LORD, mine too has been this expansion of
the inward life. It is the greatest boon a
human heart can know. And yet, my Father, to
me, as to the Baptist, it has come through pain.
He thought his was an hour of mutilation, of in-
firmity, of bondage; he bewailed the cloud that
had fallen over his faith. But the cloud was sent
by TJice. Sometimes my faith needs a cloud.
I may find it so dazzling that I may be blind
to hope and charity. I may cry, 'Destroy the
unbelievers, O God; root them out, consume
them, annihilate them ! ' When I say that, Thou
sendest my faith a cloud. Thou veilest the
heavens over Jordan ; Thou hidest the dove
descending; Thou utterest no more the voice
of the morning. Thou makest me say, 'I see

44 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

it is a harder thing than I thought to be a be-
hever; I have been too severe upon my brother-
man.' I bless Thee for these ecUpsing mo-
ments, O my God. I bless Thee that I have
been touched with the feeling of man's infirm-
ities. I bless Thee that Thou hast put a tem-
porary veil over the face of faith; it has un-
veiled her two sisters — hope and charity. When
my sky was cloudless I despaired of those who
could not see ; when my faith was fearless I was
wroth with those who could not believe. But
my tremor has made me tender, my mist has
made me merciful, my haze has made me hu-
man. I have gained more in my night than in
my day. In my day I soared beyond sympathy ;
in my night I caught my brother's hand. In ray
day I was solitary on the wing ; in my night I
had companionship through weakness. In my
day I believed only in the wheat ; in my night I
had a kindness for the chaff. In my day I had
the feeling of a lonely majesty; in my night I
had the fellowship of a common mystery. It
was worth while, O Lord, to wear a chain so
golden !

CHAPTER III

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED

As I pass from the figure of the Baptist I am ar-
rested by two other portraits hanging side by
side. The bystanders tell me that they are in-
tended to represent one and the same character
— John, Son of Zebedee. One of the portraits,
indeed, admits of no doubt on this point; it has
the name 'John, Son of Zebedee' appended to it.
The other has no title, no inscription; but all
the spectators say with one breath, 'That is
another likeness of John.' As I look into the
faces of these two portraits I am by and by
startled — not by their likeness but by their dis-
proportion. They are altogether dissimilar. It
is not a question of light hair or dark, pale
cheeks or rosy. It is a difference more vital than
that — a difference of expression. The professed
Son of Zebedee has an air of self-consciousness

about him. I do not say he is selfish; but he
45

46 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

is self-conscious. He is playing a noble part;
but he is aware that he plays it. In a more pro-
nounced sense than Peter he has a tendency to
take the lead. He makes a bid for one of the
two uppermost seats in the Messianic King-
dom. He takes a portion of Christ's government
into his own hands in the meantime — he inter-
rupts on his own account the charities of a man
who refused to take the name of Christian. He
comes forward as spokesman when a Samari-
tan village shuts its gates — he counsels a return
to the old policy of fire and sword. There are
circumstances in his life which are favourable
to self -consciousness. He is not so poor as the
other disciples. He has more outlets to worldly
influence than his Galilean brethren — even the
High Priest Caiaphas has a knowledge of him.
Above all, he is a mother's darling — the child of
one who rates him far beyond his present merits,
who thinks him good enough for anything, and
who is eagerly ambitious to advance his interests.*

* Her ambition, however, was only maternal ; her per-
sonal attitude to Christ was most unworldly (Matt, xxvii.
56 •, Mark xv. 40, and xvi. i).

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 47

There is no mirror which a young man should
subject to such close criticism as that which
reflects a mother's heart. On the whole, the
impression conveyed to my mind by this por-
trait of the professed Son of Zebedee is that of
a misguided and spoiled boy.

But turn now to the other, the nameless pic-
ture. It is a complete contrast. If the former
was self-conscious, this is self-forgetting. We
look into a face whose own look is far away.
We feel that we are in the presence of a personal-
ity which is almost oblivious of its outward sur-
roundings, altogether oblivious of itself. There
is no phrase which to my mind would describe
him so well as 'the anonymous man.' It is
not only that he never gives his name; he never
thinks of his name. In all that he does, in all
that he meditates, he keeps hid from himself.
The typical attitude in which he is painted is
that of a man lying on Christ's bosom. And
it truly describes him. This later portrait is
that of one who rests upon the bosom of human-
ity. There is one word which has become his
keynote — brotherhood. The man who in the

48 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

former painting asked a private seat above
the reach of the common crowd is found in this
later delineation elbowing his way into the heart
of that crowd and seeking to bury the very
memory of his name in the sense of a life which
made him one with the multitude.

These are the two portraits. What is their
relation to one another.'' The bystanders who
first occupied the Gallery were convinced that
they represented one and the same man. But
the modern bystanders have been divided in opin-
ion. Some have held by the original spectators
— recognising that there may be two sides to the
same character. Others have been unable thus
to bridge the chasm. They have felt that these
two portraits are separated by the gulf of Dives,
that they cannot be thought of as two sides of
a life or two phases of a character, that they be-
long to different atmospheres — one to earth and
the other to heaven — one to the mist over the
river, and the other to the mountain peak lit
by the morning sun.

Now, I want to put a question. In point of
fact, there is in the New Testament Gallery an

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 49

instance in which two portraits of the same man
are even more pronouncedly different than those
attributed to the Son of Zebedee. I allude to
the picture of Saul of Tarsus and the subse-
quent picture of Paul the Apostle. The question
I put is this, Why does no one say that these
cannot represent the same man ? Of course the
answer will be immediate. You will say, This
man, Saul of Tarsus, admittedly turned a somer-
sault ; his was a conversion, a transformation, an
emergence from darkness into light. And it is
quite true that Saul of Tarsus turned a somer-
sault. It is quite true that, as he says himself,
he passed through a change equal to that of crea-
tion in its emergence from chaos. What is not
true is the notion that in this transformation of
Saul there is anything exceptional. If we ex-
clude John the Baptist, who was in the deepest
sense a forerunner, I do not know a man of the
Gallery who had not as much need of transfor-
mation as Saul of Tarsus. It is true he was a
persecutor; but negative indifference is often
a bigger gulf than positive opposition. What
separated the Christian and the Jew was not

50 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

their hostility; it was their ideas. The chasm
between them was as great ere ever one oppos-
ing voice had been raised on either side. I
must repeat what I have already said — the New
Gallery is not a painting of qualities but a paint-
ing of transformations. Each is a different
transformation ; Paul exhibits one, John exhibits
another. If we allow the double, nay, the con-
tradictory delineation for Paul, why should we
not make the same allowance for John ! What
we see in his case is what we see in the case
of the man of Tarsus — transformation. It is
the change from egotism into impersonality,
from consciousness into forgetfulness, from
self into self - surrender. What happened to
John was the breaking of his mirror — the
smashing into fragments of that glass by which
he had shone reflected in his own sight
and had appeared the prime actor in the great
drama.

When did this destruction of the mirror take
place.? Why should we speak of it as a 'smash-
ing' ? Would it not be the result of develop-
ment.? Undoubtedly. But in all development

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 51

there is one crucial moment — a moment which
marks the boundary-hne. The building up of
individual life is a development — a progress
from stage to stage. But there is a special in-
stant in which what we call deadness passes into
life. It matters not what theory of life you
hold. You may say, if you like, with Herbert
Spencer, that it is simply the adjustment of
the organism to its environment. Very well.
But there is a moment, a crisis moment, in
which that adjustment is complete, and in that
moment we pass from death unto life. Death
in its natural course is also a development — a
gradual process of exhaustion. But there is
a point in which the process becomes an act, a
moment of immediate transformation in which
there is no longer any room for develop-
ment, and in which the change is abrupt, un-
graduated, instantaneous — we say, 'The man is
dead.'

And John had a crisis moment. It came, I
believe, in that hour when his egotism seemed
to have soared into its climax — when, swayed by
a mother's ambition, he asked the front seat

52 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

in the Kingdom. ' And it was with him as with
Paul — the hour of his deepest moral need was
the hour of his revelation. For a moment the
man of Galilee, like the man of Tarsus, saw
heaven open. And what a heaven it was! It
was a reversal of all his dreams. In answer to
his ignorant and presumptuous prayer Christ
simply raised the curtain and let the man see
in. The sight which met his gaze paralysed
his earthly wings for evermore; the soaring
ceased, the bird fell. For, what was it he saw
— what was it we all saw .-' It was a new ideal of
greatness. It was not only John the fisherman
who was transformed by that hour. We were
all transformed — kings and senators, empires
and civilisations. The world never got back to
its old regime. What was that old regime.'' It
was the idea that the greatest man is he who
has the million for his servants. But when
Jesus said to John, 'Whosoever will be great
among you, let him be your minister,' He

' On mature reflection, I would place this incident
much earlier than I did in my Studies of tJie Portrait of
Christ.

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 53

founded a new regime; He declared that the
greatest man is he who is the servant of the
milHon. That the Son of Man — the ideal of all
royalty, the synonym for all heroism, should be
linked not with mastery but with subordination,
that the name to a child of Israel most sugges-
tive of power should be associated with subservi-
ence to classes and masses alike, that the life
of the potentate should be identified in its deepest
essence with a voluntary adoption of the life of
the slave — this was not only an epoch-making
thought but a thought which has re-moulded all
the epochs. We need not wonder that it re-
moulded John.

I should say, then, that this was to John the
smashing of the mirror. It was his crisis mo-
ment. In one of his letters which has always
seemed to me to have a ring of autobiography he
speaks of having 'passed from death unto life.'
Those are the words of a man who has been
conscious of a crisis. They express the sense,
not of a process, but of an act. Doubtless there
had been a process too — subtle, hidden, under-
ground; the greater part of our preparation for

54 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the Kingdom is an unconscious preparation.
But, as I have said, to John as to every devel-
oping man there comes a boundary moment, a
point at which the soul must pass over. We
may have a very long walk to the river; but,
when we have reached the river, walking is at
an end — the remainder of the journey is to be
completed by a plunge. John is conscious of
a plunge — of having 'passed over.' He is con-
scious of having been on two banks of the river
— of having made the transition from the bosom
of his mother Salome to the bosom of the Son of
Man. He has exchanged the love of self for
the love of humanity, ambition for ardour, ego-
tism for enthusiasm. He feels that the former
man is dead — that death itself could not produce
a greater change. He forgets all the rest of
the process in the transition of a single moment ;
and no moment is to my mind so likely as that
in which on the plains of earth the Son of Man
revealed to him the ideal of heavenly greatness.

But there is one point on which I think many
of us have been under a great misapprehension.
The popular notion seems to be that John made

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 55

a transition from a very masculine to a very ef-
feminate nature. I believe it to have been ex-
actly the reverse. I have already expressed the
opinion that the influence of John's mother was
in the first instance unfavourable to him. He
was too much under her tuition and imbibed too
much of her spirit. It was a great mistake to
imagine that the early petulance and vehemence
of John are the mark of a nature not effeminate.
They come direct from effeminacy. If the origi-
nal picture is less gentle than the later picture, it
is precisely because it is more effeminate. Those
sudden gusts of temper, those sweeping breezes
of passion, those eruptions of the lava stream that
destroy Samaria and wither even a good man
if he refuse to join the Church — whence come
they.-* Just from that which is the root of
effeminacy — the absence of self-restraint, the
inability to pause and deliberate, the inefficiency
of that protective wall which prevents the im-
pulses of the heart from running over.

What John received from his transformation
was a virile soul ; and it was his virile soul that
made his gentleness. I have said that his out-

56 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

burst over Samaria came from the unrestraint
of a nature too soft to bind its wrath. But we
shall commit a great error if we imagine that the
calmness of his after-life came from a suppres-
sion of his power to feel. I have no hesitation
in saying that there is more evidence of intense
and burning feeling in the second picture than
in the first. You look at a windless, waveless
sea whose surface is unruffled and whose bosom
is unclouded. But you do not look long before
you find that the stress has been only trans-
ferred into the interior. You see heavings be-
low; you hear repressed mutterings under-
neath; you detect the shadow of a submarine
hand holding back the depths with iron grasp
and creating the surface calm by the very force
of its inward struggle. Listen to the cry that
breaks out in one of John's letters! — 'If a man
say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a
liar.' Is that the language of a weakling, of
a man emasculated, enervated, emptied of his
spirit of fire! Is it not clear that it is the fire
which is trying John's work — subjecting him to
the crucial test of whether his gentleness has yet

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 57

made him great, whether he has reached that gift
which was absent from his boyhood — the power
to be scorched without scorching, to be smitten
and not smite!

Do you know what I think the strongest evi-
dence of that self-restraint which became the
flower of the Son of Zebedee? It lies, I be-
lieve, in something not on the surface, something
for which you must read between the lines.
There are many moments of love which are not
self-restraint, but, in the most sublime sense,
self-indulgence. I would not say, for example,
that the lying on the Master's bosom was a mark
of restraint; I can imagine no greater lux-
ury. I would not say that the standing at the
foot of the cross was a mark of restraint; we
wonder that the others could restrain themselves
from being there. But the fact which I think
reveals the transformed John in his summer bloom
is his attitude to Judas Iscariot. In nothing
does he come so near his Lord. I believe that
the only two of the primitive band who detected
Judas before the time were John and his Mas-
ter; upon the rest the betrayal fell like a clap

58 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

of thunder. John and his Master alone saw
the blemish in the bud. We know that the Son
of Zebedee shared in the perception which had
broken upon his Master, because he tells us so.
Nobody can read the Fourth Gospel without
being impressed with the bitter and implacable
loathing which this man by nature entertained
for Judas — a loathing more strong, more deep,
and more outspoken than is displayed by any
of his comrades. This is the fact as it appears
on the face of the narrative. The beloved dis-
ciple has come into the dark secret of his Mas-
ter. He has detected the blackness in a human
soul. How does he act in these circumstances .-*
Does he repeat the vituperation that he launched
at the Samaritan village.? Does he call upon
the fire to come down and consume the mis-
creant ? Does he denounce this man as he de-
nounced the other man for working in a Name he
did not worship.'' No; he has learned self-re-
straint now. He conceals his revelation. He
meets Judas as he meets Peter. He meets him
at the council, he meets him at the feast, he
meets him in that solemn hour sacred to the

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 59

coming bereavement — the hour of all others when
we sigh for kindred souls. He meets him, he
greets him, as a brother ; he represses the pent-
up fury of his heart.

The question is, Why.'' I have said it was
self-restraint; but the question still remains —
Why.? There is no such thing in Christianity
as self-restraint for its own sake. It is not a
Christian virtue; it is a Stoic virtue. There
are hundreds who have passed through the
fiery furnace and never revealed that they got
any hurt; the mind can be taught to suppress
its cries. But Christian self-restraint is not
suppression; it is surrender. I may keep back
my cry from pride, or I may keep back my cry
because I have seen a possibility of succour.
John's attitude to Judas is the latter of these.
Why does he treat him as a brother.? Because
in the companionship of the Master he had
awakened to the sense of brotherhood. As
long as the shell had not burst, John and his
Master had a ray of hope for Judas. Did you
ever ask yourself the reason of Christ's open
proclamation of the prophecy, *One of you

6o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

shall betray me.' 'To show His miraculous
power, ' you say. What I regard as an unhappy
gloss has put that reason into Christ's mouth;
but He Himself would have repudiated it. It
required no miraculous power to see through Ju-
das, nor was there any miracle in the vision. I
ask again, therefore, Why does Christ in the
presence of Judas himself keep ringing the
changes of the prophecy, 'One of you shall be-
tray me' } And I answer, 'It is in the hope
that the prophecy will not come true.' He
wants the man to take fright at the mirror of
himself — as David did when he was painted by
Nathan, as Nineveh did when it was pictured by
Jonah. If by any chance he could see him-
self— if for him, bad as he was, lurid as he was,
repulsive as he was, there could lurk in some cor-
ner, however small, the tiniest patch of green —
if any stray word could waken him, any chance
light scorch him, any sudden snapshot reveal
him to himself — the Master would be proud
that His prophecy should fail.

Now, I believe Christ's first work for the
transformed John was the bearing with Judas.

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 6i

When he had reached the spiritual shore — that
state which, though on earth, he called the
world beyond death— the first work that awaited
him was a reversal of his past. As an arrogant
youth, he had called upon the flames to wrap
round and round the walls of a Samaritan village
that had closed its gates on Jesus. But here
was a spectacle compared to which the guilt of
Samaria's village grew pale! Here was a life
closing its gates — body and soul, nerve and
sinew, heart and brain; here was a mind so
dark, so irresponsive, so unsympathetic that
John himself in a moment of self-communion
calls him the ' son of perdition ' ! ' But a voice
says: 'Do not accelerate the perdition; do
not anticipate the perdition; give the man a
chance — a chance in your own heart! Do not
let the fire come down upon Samaria even in
imagination! Keep it away from your fancy;
hope against it ; pray against it ; love against it !

' I believe the words, 'None of them is lost, but the
son of perdition ' to be John's passing comment on the
statement of Christ's prayer, ' Those that Thou gavest
me I have kept' (John xvii. 12).

62 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

I do not say, 'Restrain yourself, curb yourself,
control yourself ! ' — I would rather prescribe the
wing than the chain. Bathe yourself in broth-
erhood, lave yourself in love, hide yourself in
humanity, sun yourself in the service of man;
and you will no more need to pray, "Keep back
my angry soul ! " '

Here is a fitting place to bid John farewell —
in that haven of love which was to him the
other side of death. Three times, in the testi-
mony of after-days, the curtain rises on the man.
Very surprising to me are these successive
risings. Viewed as historical or viewed as tra-
ditional, they mark the true sequence of the
spiritual life. Life has ever three typical peri-
ods; I would call them the age of imagination,
the age of reason, and the age of simplicity.
We all begin with our Apocalypse — our sight
of a city of gold with pearly gates and crystal
fountains and nightless skies. We do not
move /orzvard through, life; we move backward.
The first thing we see is the drama completed.
The dawn that greets the eye of youth is not the
dawn of its own morning but the dawn of fu-

JOHN. THE SELF-SURRENDERED 63

turity. Yesterday has no power, to-day has
no power ; we light our torch at the sun of to-
morrow. Then comes the second step, and it
is a step backward. We fall into the present
world. Reason takes the place of imagination.
To-morrow fades in to-day. Instead of looking
forward we look round. We begin to ask. Who
are we.^ — Where are we.? — What is the cause
of our being .'' — Why are there so many streets
that are not golden, so many gates that are not
of pearl, so many skies that are all night t By
and by there comes a third and final stage. It
is what we should have expected to come first—
the past of the man. He ends where we should
have looked for him to begin— in the simplic-
ity of a child. Arguments lose their interest;
theories cease to trouble ; questionings are not
long harboured in the mind— after the days of
tracing come the days of trusting.

And these are the curtains that rise over the
subsequent life of John. We see the heart of
youth swelling with the anticipation of future
glories— the man of the Apocalypse, the man of
Patmos. Then we see the heart of maturity—

64 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the sober, grave, and reverent senior, living en-
tirely in the problems of his age, and striving
to mould philosophy into the image of his
Christ ; it is the man of research, the man of the
Fourth Gospel. At last there comes the final
raising of the curtain; and we see a little child.
He has gone back to the past. We have a series
of charmingly simple letters which make the
close of his life a tribute to the instincts of
childhood. The harp of youth may have lost
most of its strings, the accents of philosophy
may have ceased to charm ; but there is one
primitive word that dominates, rules, over-rules
— it is 'love.' That word — the child's first
medium of revelation — becomes to this old man
the one test of all spiritual beauty, the one proof
that God is true, the one unassailable evidence
of the destiny and the mission of man.

MY Father, when I look at Thy Great Gal-
lery of Christian souls, it brings a deep
comfort to my heart to know that they were not
always beautiful. If theirs had been a native
splendour, I should have sunk beneath the glow.

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 65

But I bless Thee that these beautiful faces have
been gifts from Thee. I bless Thee that in the
opening of their lives they were so very plain.
It is not a prodigy that gives me hope ; it is a dull
boy rising to distinction. Even so, my hope
of loveliness is when I see beauty come from
unpromising soil. I thank Thee that Thou hast
let me see the dust of the earth out of which
came the beloved disciple — the egotism, the van-
ity, the worldly ambition, the forgetfulness of
others, the unrestrained passion, the dictatorial
pride, the mirror of self-consciousness filling all
the heart. It is an unholy picture; but it
makes me throb with the promise and potency
of holiness. For, this is the man who summers
in the bowers of eternal beauty — in the haven
of cloudless love ! This is the man that rests on
the bosom of Thy fair Christ ! He has climbed
from rags into radiance. He has soared from
dust into divinity. He has mounted from
the shadow into the sunshine. Therefore, my
Father, there is hope for me — not of bare salva-
tion, but of the glory of an archangel. I too
may bask in Thy heights; I too may dwell in

66 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Thy nightless skies. Only let Thy Christ stand
over my dust, and it will bloom. One sight of
Him will break the mirror of my vanity. One
touch of Him will still the beatings of my ambi-
tion. One tone of Him will give my passions
calm. One sigh of Him will shatter all my
pride. One memory of Him will make me re-
member myself no more. Transform me by
Thy Christ, O my God !

CHAPTER IV

NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED

As we advance through the Great Gallery we
are confronted by a face which has left its
impress on the canvas of all time; it is that of
Nathanael. There are three voices in the verb
'to live' — being, doing, suffering. There are
some who come into this world to 'do'; they
are sent to work out a mission. There are some
who come into this world to ' bear ' ; their
special gift from God has been a thorn. But
there are a few who are sent neither to do nor
to bear, but simply to 'be.' Nathanael belongs
to the last class. If you ask what he did, I can-
not tell. I can tell what Peter did, what John
did, what Paul did — but not what Nathanael did.
His mission was his being, and his being was
his beauty. We feel as if we were watching a

child whose years are to be few, and for whom
67

68 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

there is no active work designed, yet whose
petals we see unfolding and whose buds we be-
hold expanding. The picture of Nathanael is
strictly the unfolding of a flower. We are ac-
customed to say that we are told nothing about
him. Nothing of what he did, nothing of what
he bore — but of what he was, a whole biography !
Come and unfold the flower with me as it
grows under the fig-tree ! It is the only life in
the New Testament Gallery which is revealed
emerging from rustic scenes. Peter, Andrew,
James, the apostle John, probably Philip, rise
from the sea. Matthew issues from the ex-
change. Mark comes from a secretary's room.
Nicodemus seems to have come out of a library.
But Nathanael emerges from under a fig-tree.'
He is the rustic of the primitive band. Rustic-
ity is the first stage of his life-flower. A native
of Cana in Galilee, he has never left that village
for any contact with a busy town. He has not
rubbed with the world, and he remains still an
artless child — free from scheming, free from am-

' It is possible, in the light of John xxi. 2 and 3, that
at an after-date he joined the fisherman's craft.

NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 69

bition, free from jealousy, free from the conscious-
ness of self. He is without vices; but as yet
it is only the faultlessness of rustic simplicity.

I think we are in a great mistake about the
meaning of these words which Jesus spoke of
Nathanael, 'Behold an Israelite indeed, in
whom is no guile.' As popularly understood,
they would be a eulogium fit to emblazon on the
wings of angel or archangel, cherub or seraph.
If Nathanael has reached this altitude, why call
him to Jesus at all! Could Christ do more for
any man than make him free from guile! If
this man has reached the climax, he has no need
of the climbing ; the ladder from earth to heaven
is in his case quite superfluous ! Let him remain
under the fig-tree and meditate on his own skies ;
he can see no greater things than these !

But my reading of this passage is very differ-
ent. I would paraphrase it thus: 'It is not
opposition I am afraid of ; it is dishonest opposi-
tion. I see a man resting under a tree. He is
a thorough Israelite — earnestly devoted to the
Rabbinical traditions of his country, and therefore
naturally not in sympathy with me. Yet in his

70 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

opposition there is no guile. There is nothing
mean about it, nothing personal, nothing paltry.
He is genuinely afraid of the new movement —
afraid from the highest, purest motives. There
will be an opposition which will come from
guile. Men will refuse to come to me through
fear of the cross, through dread of the sacrifice
which my religion involves. But here is a man
who is afraid he will lose the cross, afraid he
will be deprived of the cJiancc of sacrifice. He
says, " Can any good thing come out of Naza-
reth ! " He thinks my religion will be too gay
a thing, too sportive, too joyous. He distrusts
Nazareth, he distrusts any part of Galilee. Gal-
ilee is too near the Gentiles for him — too near
the confluence of the sinful nations who spend
their life in eating and drinking, marrying and
giving in marriage. He fears it will be a world-
ly religion, withdrawing the mind from what is
serious and making the faith of Israel an imita-
tion of the games of Greece.'

Consider, for a rustic like Nathanael and one
with the weakness of a rustic, there was nothing
strange in his entertaining such a presentiment

NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 71

For let us remember that Christianity is the only
religious revival in the world which has come in
gay attire. Everywhere else the revival of re-
ligion has appeared in dust and ashes ; men have
beat upon their breasts and cried, 'Unclean!'
Christ Himself was at first disposed to fast ; but
He had changed His thought — changed it for
the ringing of bells and the playing of dance-
music. And the sequel was to emphasise the
change. Any man of the Baptist's school would
be startled out of his senses by what he was to
see. He would see Jesus Himself immediately
after His opening ministry' providing for the
supply of wine at a marriage feast ! He would
see this same Jesus turning a religious meeting
into a social picnic because He saw that the
people were faint and weary ! He would see
Matthew signalising his conversion by a sumptu-
ous dinner to his friends ! He would see young
ministers after the Sunday-morning service
walking in the fields and plucking the cars of
corn! He would see Martha — not in spite of,

' John's first chapters presuppose that Christ was in
the air previous to the feast of Cana.

72 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

but by reason of, Christ's presence — spreading
the richest repast that ever graced a table in
Bethany! All this he would be compelled to
view.

And what would he feel? Very much, I
think, what a former generation of simple coun-
try-people felt when the innovations of modern
science first broke upon the scene. When the
white sail was supplanted by the black wreaths
of the steamer; when the shrill railway -whistle
woke the silent air; when a message was sent
to India and an answer came back within an hour ;
when a man was told that he could speak to his
brother through a distance of sixteen hundred
miles; when, later still, the voices of men were
bottled up in jars, carried across the Atlantic,
and made to deliver speeches or sing songs after
perhaps their original owners had passed away
from earth — I say, such revelations as these
must have shaken all the lives reposing under
the fig-tree. They must have felt as if private
communion were abolished, as if the life of
public day had extinguished for ever the possi-
bilities of the quiet hour, as if there were no

NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 73

longer a meeting-place between the soul and
God.

I have attributed to Nathanael the weakness
of the rustic. Some may be shocked by the
ascription. But to me it is an impossible sup-
position that Jesus had any need to convert a
man who was already in the literal sense holy,
harmless, undefiled. Christ came to transform;
if Nathanael was perfect, there was nothing to
change in him. I think there was something
to change. I believe that originally his under-
standing was narrow ; he wanted mental vigour,
and Christ called him to give him that vigour.
To me the want of mental vigour appears more
in the second stage of the flower than in the first.
It is not so much in his opposition to Christ as
in his acceptance of Christ that the weakness is
seen. If he was opposed to Christ on inadequate
evidence, he accepted Him on evidence more
inadequate still. The narrative is given in very
direct and simple terms, and may be briefly re-
capitulated.

Philip runs into Nathanael' s retreat and ac-
costs him with the virtual announcement, 'The

74 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Messiah is come — the long-expected, the long-
desired; He is come in the person of a toiling
man, a man of Nazareth ! ' ' That cannot be, '
cries Nathanael; 'we who are of Galilee know
too much about its sinfulness to recognise a
Christ from Nazareth ! ' ' Instead of arguing
about the matter, ' exclaims Philip, 'come and see
for yourself ; look at the man with your own eyes,
and judge him ! ' Nathanael agrees to the
test. He is brought right into the presence of
Jesus. Jesus greets him as one with whom
He had long been familiar. 'How do you
know me.''' says Nathanael. Jesus answers, 'I
saw you sitting under the fig-tree before any
man's attention was directed to you.' Then,
with a great rush of enthusiasm, with a gust of
conviction that swept all before it, Nathanael
breaks forth into the vehement exclamation,
* Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the
King of Israel!'

Now, I have no hesitation in saying that the
rustic was prominent here. Nathanael had en-
tered upon a great sea in a boat that was not fit to
bear a single gale. The conclusion was far too

NATHAN AEL THE INVIGORATED 75

big for the premises. He had rested the Mes-
siahship of Jesus on what would now be called
an act of clairvoyance — a power to see things at
a distance. That was no mark of Messiahship ;
I doubt if it was even a necessary mark of good-
ness. It was a possession of the prophets
— and there were bad men with the prophetic
faculty. So far as I see, all the wicked peo-
ple in Nazareth might have had this power
without in the slightest degree diminishing
their wickedness. Nathanael was here untrue
to that fine moral bias which had prompted his
original prejudice. The moral bias was the one
good thing about the prejudice. He was then
in search of goodness from his Christ; it was
a terrible fall to come down to clairvoyance,
Jesus Himself was surprised at the crude convic-
tion. 'Because I said I saw thee under the fig-
tree, believest thou ! ' It is not the glad surprise
He expressed later at the faith of the Phoenician
woman. He recognises, no doubt, that Nathan-
ael has made an advance — that the flower has
actually found its way into the light; but He
feels that it has dropped something in the proc-

76 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

ess. Nathanael has lowered his demand. He
has abated his claim. He has consented to take
less from his Christ than he asked under the
fig-tree. There, he had dem^-nded a Christ who
should come from a holy soil, whose environ-
ment should be solemn, whose tread should be
serious. Now, he has for the time forgotten
these impressions, and is willing to reverence a
King who has the attribute of second sight !

Let us understand this matter. The Christ
of the Gospels desires beyond all things to se-
cure proximity to Himself. He will accept that
on any terms — even should the coming be for
the sake of the loaves; He knows that mere
proximity will eventually kindle fire. But in
the case of such inadequate motives there is ab-
sent an element of joy. It is not that there is
little faith. I believe Nathanael had enormous
faith. I believe he would have gone to the stake
for his faith. I think his conviction at that mo-
ment was deeper than that of any of the previ-
ous converts — deeper than Peter's or John's or
Philip's or Andrew's. But the conviction itself
was based on something which Christ did not

NATHAN AEL THE INVIGORATED 77

hold to be an essential part of His system. Let
me try to illustrate the difference between the
'little faith' and the 'inadequate faith.'

Imagine that a popular plebiscite were taken
with the view of ascertaining the public's esti-
mate of some great poet — let us say, Robert
Browning. Let us suppose that hundreds of
sheets were crowded with panegyrics and a few
tens with adverse criticisms. But let us con-
ceive the idea that the list was closed by two
very unique statements of opinion, neither of
which could be described as either eulogy or
blame, and which by their very eccentricity
excited much attention. Let us imagine the
contents of these two paragraphs. We begin
with the last but one.

It says : ' I believe that Browning has a power
which I have not perceived. His great poems
are quite obscure to me. I cannot understand
Sordello ; I cannot fathom Paracelsus ; I can-
not unravel TJie Ring and the Book. I must
say, with the Psalmist, "Such knowledge is
too great for me; it is high; I cannot attain
unto it." Yet I am willing to believe that the

78 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

error is in me. The reason is that when I
read some of his small pieces, such as Evelyn
Hope and Easter Day, I feel charmed both with
thought and style. These fragments enliven
me, refresh me, quicken me. I would come to
Browning for these tiny sparks from the anvil.
The great work of his forge is meaningless to
me; but the sparks have light and warmth, and
they seem to beckon me on to the hope of
higher vision. '

Now, I should say that this man had *a little
faith' in Browning. He believes in him to the
extent of Evelyn Hope and Easter Day ; and on
account of that belief he distrusts his adverse
judgment of the rest. These are elements of
faith — very few, very fragmentary, very simple,
but pointing in the right direction. Let us
look now at the other and latest paragraph;
it breathes a sentiment wholly different, and
must be measured by a standard of its own.

It says : ' I am sure that Browning is a bom
poet. I have never read him, but I have done
better — I have come into contact with his
soul. I was privileged once to meet him, to

NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 79

be introduced to him. It was under a tree. I
had run beneath its branches for shelter from a
passing shower, and there I found a group al-
ready gathered, of whom Browning was one.
He was made known to me ; and it seemed as if
he had known me all along. His manner was
that of a familiar friend. Nothing could exceed
his courtesy, his urbanity, his freedom from
self-consciousness, his personal interest in the
things of which I spoke. I felt then and I feel
now that only the soul of a poet could have
enabled any man to throw himself thus into the
life of another. '

I ask, What is the position of this man.^ Is
he in want of faith .-' No; he has boundless
faith ; he has crowned his ideal with full laurels.
But then, it is Nathanael's crown — a. crown
given for inadequate causes. He has accepted
Browning as his laureate, not on account of his
poetry, but on account of an interview under a
tree. He has reached a royal conclusion by
faulty premises. No doubt it is good that in
any capacity he should stand near Browning.
We will not rob him of his place ; hereafter he

8o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

may bloom by reason of the contact. We only
claim the right to say that he has reached this
place by a short and easy method, and that he
will some day have to fall back to conquer the
unappropriated ground.

And now I come to the third and final step
in the spiritual history of Nathanael. It is
announced by Jesus as something still in the
future which is awaiting him and all of them;
but it is announced as a positive certainty —
with the formula, 'Verily, verily, I say unto
you.' Jesus predicts Nathanael's mental in-
vigoration. He predicts the time when he will
base His claims on something higher than a
case of physical clairvoyance — 'You shall see
heaven open, and the angels of God ascend-
ing and descending upon the Son of Man. '

What does this mean.? Literally it says,
'You Nathanael, and the rest of you, will yet
see the fulfilment of Jacob's vision.' But what
was Jacob's vision.-' It was the vision of God's
charity to man. The angels are ascending and
descending for purposes of ministration; they
are the ministrant spirits of the old dispensa-

NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 8i

tion. But there is one statement of Christ which
is an addition to the picture, and which is to
my mind strikingly original. It is the words,
' upon the Son of Man. ' I do not think we have
grasped the significance of these words. Jesus
claims charity as the special evidence of His
religion. He says that He is the basis of all
philanthropy, of all benevolence, of all humani-
tarian effort. He refuses the name of charity
to anything which does not move 'on the steps
of the Son of Man.' He tells Nathanael that
this, and not clairvoyance, is to be the sign of
His Messiahship. He claims to be the founder
of active sympathy; on His steps alone could
it descend from heaven ; other foundation could
no man lay.

Consider. In the world before Christ, in the
world into which Christ was born, charity had
sought to descend by the steps of other lad-
ders. The Stoic had preached forgiveness of
injury; but the ladder on which he descended
was the sense of contempt for man. Nobody
was worth being angry at, nobody was worth

quarrelling with. The mass of the human
6

82 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

race were poor creatures, too insignificant to
stir dissension in the breast of a philosopher or
wake revenge in the soul of a thinker. Again.
The Roman supported institutions for the heal-
ing of wounded soldiers and the cure of sick
slaves; but the ladder on which he descended
was the spirit of self-interest. He wanted to
preserve his property. If the soldier had the
prospect of life in him, he might again serve
his country ; if the slave gave hope of recovery,
he might again serve his master. The hospitals
of that old world were not homes for the good
of the sufferer; they were homes for the good
of the healthy. They were intended to recruit
the sinews of war for the leaders of armies;
they were designed to recoup the resources of
wealth for the masters of households. Do I
speak this to their blame.? Assuredly not. It
was an aim legitimate and right. But it was not
the vision which Nathanael was to see. It
was not a descent on the steps of the Son of
Man. In fact, man had nothing to do with it;
he was the one factor absent from human calcu-
lation. Nobody took into account that he was

. NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 83

lying on a bed of pain; nobody asked whether
his suffering could be mitigated. The one ques-
tion was, Could it be cured ? — could he be made
available for the economy of the state or the econ-
omy of the domestic hearth? If he could, the
gates of the infirmary were thrown open to him ;
if he could not, he had the fate of the man at
the Pool of Bethesda — he could not get in.

Now, Nathanael's vision was to be very dif-
ferent from this. The difference lay in the me-
dium of descent. Rome stooped from her
proud altitude to bind the wounds of the sufferer ;
but the ladder on which she came was not the
ladder of Jacob — she descended on the steps of
self-interest. But the steps of the Son of Man
led in the opposite way. There was no thought
of self, no thought of personal damage, no thought
of lost service. There was only one thought
— that a human form was being mutilated, that
a human heart was feeling sad. Even the possi-
bility of recovery was not the boundary-line of
sympathy. Man ' s physical care was to go beyond
his physical hope. It was to take up the incur-
ables. It was to provide a home for those who

84 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

would serve no more, would fight no more,
would be citizens of their country no more.
It was to prepare for them a new citizenship —
a place where they could abide under the shad-
ow of the Almighty and render obedience, not
in serving, but in waiting. This was the spec-
tacle which in the days to come was to greet
the eyes of Nathanael. And the strange thing
is that the ground of this compassion for human
suffering was not the insignificance but the great-
ness of man. Not because he was a poor, help-
less creature shaken by every wind and at the
mercy of every circumstance was man's benevo-
lence to be evoked for man. Rather was charity
to be elicited by the fact that above the manger
there was a star, that in company with the weary
night-vigils there were choirs of celestial song,
that, lying beside the impotence of the babe,
there were gold and frankincense and myrrh
that told of a coming glory.

Before taking leave of Nathanael there is one
thing I should like to say. Christian writers,
as a rule, have been eager to include his name
in the list of the twelve apostles — they have

NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 85

tried to identify him with Bartholomew. It has
seemed to them that one so early called 7mist
have been an apostle. In that view I cannot con-
cur. I do not think Nathanael was an apostle.
I believe the Fourth Gospel had for one of its
designs just to show that men could get close to
Jesus without any official position. Look at its
very keynote! — 'As many as received Him, to
them gave He power to become the sons of God,
even to them that believe on His name.' That
keynote seeks to show that on the wings of in-
ward faith, whose beating is inaudible even to
the bystander, the humblest soul may soar direct
into the heart of the Master. Accordingly, this
Gospel has a record regarding Christians else-
where unnamed or undwelt on — Nathanael, Nico-
demus, Martha, Mary, Lazarus. Every one of
them was brought as near to Jesus as any apostle
of the band. Nathanael saw His glory; Nico-
demus buried Him; Mary anointed Him; Martha
reasoned with Him; Lazarus rose with Him
in resurrection life. To be in such a company
was worth all the privileges of the twelve.

86 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

SON of Man, they tell me that Thy crown has
faded. They are wrong; it was never so
bright as now. To Thee there was ever but
one crown — Charity ; to this end wert Thou born
and for this cause earnest Thou into the world.
Men have mistaken the nature of Thy glory.
Like Nathanael, they have seen Thy lustre in
a bauble ; and when the bauble has broken they
have said that Thou hast faded. But in truth
Thou hast had to wait for Thy glory, O Christ;
it is only fully in sight now. Charity is the
youngest-born child of Thy Father. There
have been days of prophecy, days of eloquence,
days of doctrine, days of creed and confession;
but charity was still a child. It is but yesterday
that we have begun to descend on Thy steps ; but
at last the dawn is breaking! Above the creed
there has sounded the cry — the cry of wounded
humanity. We used to ask how we were to as-
cend with Thee to heaven ; we are now inquiring
how we are to descend with Thee to earth. We
cannot get deep enough down until we get into
Thy chariot; our brother's rags are too loath-
some to us till we have sight of Thee. But

NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 87

Thou hast heightened my helpfulness by height-
ening my standard of man. It is not pity that
I need; it is praise. It is not tears that I
need; it is triumph. It is not heaviness that I
need ; it is hope. Others can show me the vile
raiment of the prodigal; Thou pointest to the
robe that is awaiting him. Others can tell me
he is despised; Thy look follows him afar off.
Others with a passing tear can leave him among
the swine; Thou preparest for him the music
in the house of the Father. Take us into Thy
descending chariot, O Son of Man!

CHAPTER V

PETER THE EMBOLDENED

There is no figure in the New Testament
Gallery which presents to the eye such a mix-
ture of simplicity and enigma as that of Simon
Peter. To outward appearance his character
may be read on the surface. He is not a theolo-
gian like John the Baptist; he is not a mystic
like John the Evangelist; he is a plain, blunt
man that speaks the language of the common day
and breathes the wants of the passing hour.
He is more like an open book than is any other
figure in the Gallery. We feel that we have met
him often, that we shall meet him many times
again. He is one of those men who on a super-
ficial view promise to offer a very easy sub-
ject of study. And yet the promise is a delusion.
Among the spectators of that Gallery there has

been probably more disagreement about the char-

88

PETER THE EMBOLDENED 89

acter of Simon Peter than about the character
oi any other representative of New Testament
life. It very often happens that the men and
women we meet in this world who seem most
open and above-board are precisely those who
prove the most difficult to read. Simon Peter
is one of these. He not only seems, but he
is, above-board. There is nothing sinister,
nothing secret, nothing underhand; his words
and deeds convey exactly the meaning he in-
tends them to convey. Yet at the close of our
inspection we find ourselves entangled in what
appears to be a web of inconsistencies from
which there is no hope of extrication. We
seem to be confronted by a life of opposing
qualities — sometimes touching the heavens, at
others coming perilously near the nether world
— now in the heights of ecstasy, anon in the
depths of despair — to-day winning our admira-
tion, to-morrow exciting a feeling akin to re-
pulsion. The life, in fact, alternates between
cowardice and bravery. These are the poles be-
twixt which he wavers. Every great thing he
does comes from a moment of bravery; every

90 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

mean act to which he stoops comes from a mO'
ment of cowardice. The most cursory examina-
tion will make this clear.

The symbol of his whole life is the sea-walk-
ing. That is in miniature the picture of his en-
tire character. We see him for an instant on the
top of the wave, daring a deed which none of his
compeers could have dared; the next he is
shrieking with abject terror, ' Lord, save me ! '
And the picture gives no outward cause for this.
We see no increase of the storm. The wind has
not heightened; the waves have not swollen;
the sea does not look more scowling than when
he planted his foot upon its bosom. It is a
struggle pure and simple between bravery in his
own breast and cowardice in his own breast.
And this picture, as I have said, is the keynote to
every incident of his life. He makes professions
of loyalty to Jesus far beyond those of his breth-
ren; in an hour of real danger he shows the
courage to maintain them — he draws a sword
in the garden against heavy odds. Yet within
a few hours this man quails before the question
of a servant -girl, and denies the Lord whom he

PETER THE EMBOLDENED 91

loves! I see again no adequate cause for the
change; it must have come from a tremor in
his own soul. Once more. He was one of the
first to recognise the claims of the Gentiles.
Bravely did he stand forth as the champion of
Gentile freedom at a time when the thought
was exciting deep animosities. For ventilating
that thought Stephen had paid the penalty with
his life. For ventilating that thought the con-
vert Paul had been forced to retire into tempo-
rary exile. It was at such a moment that Peter's
voice was raised in courageous vindication of a
universal Gospel. Yet, within a few brief years,
this same man goes down to Antioch, and in
the face of far less danger keeps aloof from the
Gentile converts! Again I say I fail to recog-
nise an adequate outward cause for the change.
The cause, whatever it is, is within the man.
His soul is a battlefield between bravery and
cowardice; and here contend for the mastery
of his heart the two most opposite things in life
— the heroism of the soldier and the abjectness
of the poltroon.

Here, then, is a subject for the psychologist.

92 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

We want to know why it was that within the
soul of this man there could dwell such con-
flicting elements. We can understand a mix-
ture of doubt and faith, we can imagine a union
of weakness and strength, we can comprehend
the existence of a natural placidness side by
side with the possibility of flashing fire; but
the co-existence of bravery and cowardice, the
union of the hero and the faint-heart — that is
something which challenges the philosopher and
calls for explanation.

Let me begin by giving the popular expla-
nation. It is this : ' Peter is set forth as an ex-
ample of the principle, " Let him that thinketh
he standeth take heed lest he fall. " He is a mon-
ument of the fact that men are liable to fail in
their strongest qualities unless periodically re-
newed by Divine Grace. Peter was by nature a
brave man. He possessed a soul of fire which
made him forget his own limitations, which drove
him instantaneously into work beyond his power.
He lived by confidence in his own strength, and
he overrated his own strength. He was one
of those men to whom preliminary success is

PETER THE EMBOLDENED 93

necessary. If his first charge were successful,
he would carry all before him. But if checked
in the assault, he would sink suddenly, utterly,
ignominiously. All his courage would desert
him. A great reaction would come, in which the
once powerful heart would become prostrate, in
which the spirit ready to dare all things would
bow itself to the dust — conveying the moral to
all self-confident souls that the highest human
gift needs to be supported from above.'

Now, without for a moment disputing the truth
of the moral, this is not my view of the character
of Simon Peter as delineated in the Gospel Gal-
lery. I must repeat that this Gallery is a record
of transformations, in which each man passes
from a lower into a higher self. But the view
here adduced would make Peter's higher self the
original element and his later self the decline.
The whole picture, as I take it, is based upon an
opposite conception. Instead of being by na-
ture the courageous man we portray, the Peter
of the Gallery is introduced to us as a man of
extreme timidity — one of those trembling, shrink-
ing souls that suggest rather the girl than the

94 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

youth. We shall go wrong, in my opinion, if
we do not start from this basis. I admit that
we are dealing with an inconsistent character;
but let us not mistake the nature of the incon-
sistency. The inconsistency of Peter lies in
his strength and not in his weakness. The in-
consistency is the Divine thing about him —
the thing that brings him nearest to his Mas-
ter. It lies not in the fact that a brave man
periodically becomes a coward, but that a cow-
ardly man periodically becomes brave. It is as
if a miser were suddenly to give an enormous
subscription to a charitable institution; the
subscription, and not the miserliness, is the
thing to be accounted for. Our wonder should
begin, not where Peter sinks, but where he
stands upon the wave — not where he denies his
Lord, but where he vows to die with Him. To
take such a view is not only more consonant with
the picture, it is really more just to Peter. It
places his character on a higher level. To fall
from an original eminence implies a moral stain ;
but to rise to a height which you have not yet
acquired the adequate strength to maintain —

PETER THE EMBOLDENED 95

this is but a sign of weakness, and ought to be
a ground of sympathy.

From this point of view I should be disposed
to divide the hfe of Peter into three periods.
The first is the time when timidity reigns su-
preme. The second is the stage in which there
begins a struggle between timidity and a new
principle — courage. The third is that period
in which the new principle vanquishes the old
and courage becomes the dominant note of his
life.

First, then. Peter originally appears in an
attitude of constitutional timidity. You say.
Was he not a fisherman — one who is supposed
to buffet the winds and the waves and look with
scorn upon the elements of danger ! Yes ; and
has it never struck you with surprise that the
earliest instance of timidity we meet in the Gos-
pels is just among Christ's little band of fisher-
men— of whom Peter was one ! I have often
marvelled that when that squall burst upon the
bark on the Sea of Galilee these men manifested
such abject trepidation. Fancy a company of
Engliah sailors overtaken by a sudden gale

96 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

and giving vent to their feelings in a simulta-
neous shriek of terror — 'Save us, we perish!'
But it is precisely such a fancy that explains
the mystery. For, these men are not English;
they are at the opposite remove from the Eng-
lishman. The fishermen of England, the mar-
iners of England, the very tourists of England,
have become so endeared to the sea that even
its storms bring a sense of exhilaration. But
to the son of Judah the sea v^as always a horror.
Jonah was no exceptional case when he ran to sea
to escape the presence of the Lord God. It
was to all his countrymen the one region where
the presence of the Lord God could not be traced.
Although the exigencies of daily life demanded
from the men of Galilee the prevalence of the
fisherman's calling, I do not think it was for them
a voluntary profession. I think the fishermen
were the most timid set of the community —
as the shepherds were the bravest. I have no
doubt they went out into the deep with fear and
trembling, inquired anxiously the signs of the
sky, experienced during the voyage all the palpi-
tations of the shrinking heart, and thanked God

PETER THE EMBOLDENED 97

fervently when they encountered no gale. 'We
have left all, and followed Thee,' said Peter to
the Lord, speaking for himself and his fellow-
fishermen. But in truth neither he nor they had
made any sacrifice. They were very glad to get
rid of their calling on the chance of something
else. That 'something else' was precarious;
but the sea was more precarious still. We
err if we imagine that these men left a comfort-
able living. They left a struggling, and, to their
mind, a dangerous mode of subsistence — a life
which heredity had made full of unpleasant asso-
ciations, and which the national instinct shrank
from. It is written of Christ that He once ''con-
strained His disciples to get into a ship'; that
is what life's struggle always did to the men of
Galilee.

Peter carried his lack of courage into the
kingdom. He left his boat behind him, but he
left not behind him his timidity. Christ took
men into His kingdom with their old garments
on; the ring and the robe were an after-consid-
eration. He let them come with all the elements

of their imperfection clinging round them — with
7

98 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the hand unringed, with the feet unshod, with the
vesture unadorned. Within His holy temple the
votaries again and again revealed traces of old
culture — the remains of a former day. There are
incidents in Peter's life which are commonly at-
tributed to bold presumption, but which, to my
mind, suggest only the survival of this primi-
tive culture — the spirit of extreme timidity.
Take that memorable occasion on which the Mas-
ter broke to His disciples the tidings of His
approaching death and when Peter exclaimed
with hot repudiation, 'Be it far from Thee,
Lord ; this will not be unto Thee ! ' It is com-
monly set down to his impertinent forwardness.
I think it was the voice of shrinking fear. No
doubt devotion to Jesus counted for something;
but they were all devoted as well as Peter.
We have to find a reason why Peter was the
spokesman. And I think that reason lay,
not in his being the most impertinent, but in
his being the most timid. He shrank from the
thought of danger. He sought to figure a bright-
er destiny. With a sailor's superstition, he cried
out against the omen as if he would avert it,

PETER. THE EMBOLDENED 99

bear it down. He is an object rather for
compassion than for recrimination. Will it be
said that the sternness of Christ's reproof, 'Get
thee behind me, Satan ! ' is at variance with such
a view.^ But to whom was that reproof admin-
istered.? To Peter.'' No — to Satan — to the
tempter of the wilderness. We are told that
after the temptation Satan left Him 'for a sea-
son.' This implies that he was to come back.
He had come back now, and he had come back
with the old temptation — to reject the cross for
the crown, to choose the purple instead of the
poverty, to sway by law in place of stooping
by love. It was not to Peter that Christ ad-
ministered the rebuke. It was not Peter that
He saw before Him; it was the tempter once
more — that tempter whom He had already sim-
ilarly and summarily dismissed. The disciple
who had just been commended for having a
revelation which flesh and blood had not com-
municated would never have been addressed by
the name of * Satan ' !

There is another incident commonly attributed
to the presumption of Peter which I think has

loo THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

its source in his timidity. I allude to that mo-
ment on the Mount of Transfiguration when he
exclaimed, ' Methinks it is good to be here ; and
let us make three tabernacles — one for Thee and
one for Moses and one for Elias!' The dicta-
tion of a plan to Jesus is startling enough ; but
I think it was really a cry of fear. The refrain
of that death-prophecy was still ringing in his
ears. He attributed to Jesus the dream of a
Messianic conquest. He thought, if that dream
could be dispelled, the death and danger prefig-
ured would melt away. If, instead of battling
with the rude world, the Son of Man would pitch
His tabernacle on a height, if He would estab-
lish His seat on the top of the mountain far
from the din and strife of men, if He would sit
there till suppliants came to Him and descend
not Himself into the lists of human competi-
tion, it seemed to Peter that the new regime
would cease to be one of storm and stress, of
difficulty and danger, of sorrow and sacrifice,
but would become a haven of peace, a home of
tranquillity, a place where body and soul could
alike find repose. It was his constitutional

PETER THE EMBOLDENED loi

shrinking from peril that made him wish to re-
main on the hill.

But, all this time, there was growing up in
Simon Peter a new and higher life. Even
amid the survivals of his old culture the second
stage of his spiritual history had already opened.
That second period is one of struggle — the
struggle between the original timidity and a
new principle which stimulated to courage.
Jacob had begun to wrestle with his angel and,
though baffled oft, had refused to let him go.
Whence came this element of bravery.-' It was
born of love. There is no mystery about it ; you
may see the same thing every day. I have
seen a soul of extraordinary timidity kindled into
a courage which Caesar might have envied;
the iire came from love. One who all through
life had shrunk from the slightest hint of danger
I have known to rush into a burning house to
save her infant from the flames. And yet it
does not follow that at this moment the consti-
tutional timidity was dead. The rain may still
fall when the sun is shining. Doubtless, where
the element of love was absent, this woman would

102 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

for many a day subside into her old cowardice
in the ordinary trifles of life, and to the eye of
friends and companions would reveal no spiritual
change. None the less the spiritual change would
be there, and sooner or later it would leaven the
whole nature; for love to one creates love to
all, and the courage inspired by my single pure
affection will at last become my courage for
every danger of my brother-man.

Now, there had come to Peter one great love.
He had met with a life which peculiarly domi-
nated him. It dominated him by stilling him,
calming him. The very timidity of Peter made
Christ to him a special rest; in that tabernacle
his trembling spirit could repose. And in his
devotion to Jesus he had moments of a new ex-
perience— courage. At first it came only in
thought. He fought battles for Christ in the im-
agination, stood with Him in vision on the stormy
sea, died with Him in the realms of fancy.
Let no one say that this profited nothing. All
virtue, all vice, begins in thinking. The man
who has fought a successful moral battle in his
imagination, is already more than half vie-

PETER THE EMBOLDENED 103

torious, for it is in imagination that Sin looks
brightest and virtue seems most hard to win.
He may fail betimes in the actual struggle;
fancy may drop her lamp for a moment; he
may turn his eyes from the Christ to the sea and
the winds raging. But let him faint not.
Success is coming. The battle in the soul is
the real test. The victory in fancy has guar-
anteed the triumph in fact; and he who has
conquered in the spirit will not long be worsted
in the flesh.

There came to Simon Peter such a time of ab-
solute victory. There came a time when the
struggle with his angel ceased and when he
glowed in the unclouded sun of Peniel. The final
stage of his spiritual experience is that of un-
broken courage. Timidity vanishes altogether,
and in its room there comes a calm and habitual
fearlessness — not the spasmodic burst of con-
fidence which marked his earliest days, but a
fixed and abiding bravery pervading all his life
and directing all his way.

How do we know that this was the final stage
of Simon Peter.'' Because we have in our pes-

I04 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

session a letter written in his mature life which
embodies precisely this spirit. I think the let-
ters of the New Testament have each a special
characteristic, a quality which distinguishes them
from beginning to end. The Epistle to the Ro-
mans has the quality of reasoning. The Epistle
to the Galatians is a letter of self-defence. The
Epistle to the Ephesians is a eulogy on Christ's
imperialism. The Epistle to the Philippians is
in praise of Christian sacrifice. The Epistles to
Timothy are a note of exhortation. The Epistles
of John are calls to brotherhood. The Epis-
tle of James is a plea for practical religion.
What is the Epistle of Peter.-' — I mean his first,
or more undisputed, epistle. What is its char-
acteristic } Can we put our hand upon any chord
which pervades all its utterances .■" I think we
can. To my mind there is one theme which
runs through this letter as clearly as an air runs
through the variations in a piece of music. That
theme is courage. Peter has taken for his
subject the counterpart of his former self.
More than any document of the New Testament
this letter is the Epistle of Courage. Other things

PETER THE EMBOLDENED 105

are accidental; this is its essence, its glory, its
crown. In every note, in every bar, in every ca-
dence, we find the man stepping over his dead self
and revealing the newness of life ; the Peter on the
top of the wave looks down upon the Peter sink-
ing in the depths and cries, ' You were wrong ! '
The very first key struck is one of reversal,
'Blessed be God, who has begotten us into a
lively hope' — a hope pervading the life — not
coming periodically in fits and starts, but tak-
ing up its abode within the soul. Listen again !
— * We are redeemed by the precious blood of
Christ as of a lamb without blemish and with-
out spot. ' Where is now the rebuke, ' Be it far
from Thee, Lord ; this shall not be unto Thee ' !
— the thing from which he recoiled has become
'precious.' Again — 'The God of all grace,
after ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect,
stablish, strengthen, settle you. ' What a com-
ment on his own experience! To be no longer
spasmodic, fitful, wayward, but * stablished, '
' settled ' — it was the realisation of all his wants,
and therefore it seemed to him the crown of all
perfection. And then, notice the boldness of the

io6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

wish that we should not be made perfect till
after we have * suffered awhile ' ! What a note of
autobiography is here ! Where is now the call for
the three tabernacles that he might be free,
from the troubles of the plain! To him in his
retrospect these troubles have become the glo-
rious things. It is the ' trial of faith ' which
he declares to be ' more precious than gold. '
In looking back he has such a reverence for
the crosses of his life that he would not value
perfection without them. The suffering is to
him part of the privilege — ' Count it all joy ! '
he cries. He claims the cloud as essential to the
clearness, the night as instrumental to the noon.
The evening and not the morning is Peter's
golden hour. The morning was leaden and
grey; the evening is light and glorious. The
morning made faint with fear; the evening
makes strong with sanguineness. The morn-
ing saw his spirit crouch in a coward's lair;
the evening leads him forth to dwell in the path
of danger. The motto of his maturity is this:
* Forasmuch as Christ has suffered in the flesh,
arm yourselves also with the same mind. '

PETER THE EMBOLDENED 107

1 THANK Thee, O Lord, that there is wait-
ing for each of us a courage in reserve.
This man when he started was quite unfit for
the work that lay before him ; he had not nerve
to face hfe's storm. But it all came — came
with the day and with the hour ; it was reserved
in heaven till the crisis moment. I too, Lord,
am unfit for the struggle of life ; if I attempt to
walk upon its sea I shall inevitably sink and per-
ish. I have not the courage to contemplate the
winds and the waves; I am tempted to fly to
the mountain and build a tabernacle there. But
in the light of this man's experience I will not.
What know I but that my courage may be sleep-
ing beside the sea, waiting till I come up and
claim it! What know I but that my treasure
may be hid in the very field which seems so deso-
late and lonely! Hast Thou not said even of
Thyself, ' My hour is not yet come ' ! I may
bear a cross on Friday which I could not have
borne on the past Monday. If I cannot bear it
on Monday shall I say to my soul, * Flee as a
bird to your mountain ' ! Nay, my Christ, for
there may be potent powers of courage sleeping

io8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

in the folds of Friday. There are angels in the
wilderness who only show themselves in the
fasting hour. There are angels in Gethsemane
who only reveal themselves amid my crying
and tears. Shall I wait for the breaking of the
cloud before I face the rain ! Nay, for my char-
iot may be in the cloud. I shall come with-
out strength to the storm; I shall go without
weapons to the wilderness; I shall repair
without guarantee to the Garden; I shall jour-
ney without courage to the Cross. My shin-
ing will come with the shadow; my power will
wake with the pain; my courage will rise with
the conflict ; my fortitude will dawn with the fire ;
my nerve will be strengthened with the need;
my resource will be ready with the rain-cloud;
my boldness will be born with the breeze. I
shall walk with Thee by faith till the fulness of
the time.

CHAPTER VI

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCIED

I AM glad that among the figures of the New
Testament Gallery there is a place assigned to
the student. Great as is our satisfaction to see
an acknowledgment of life's practical callings,
there would, I think, have been an omission if
there had been no portrayal of the intellectual
struggles of the soul. There is such a portray-
al. It appears in the portrait of Nicodemus.
He is distinctively the man of study — the man of
the night-lamp. I do not mean that he repre-
sents exclusively the life of the university. The
student is limited to no calling. He may be a
fisherman like Peter or a tax-gatherer like
Matthew or a tentmaker like Paul. Student
life is not a profession; it is a state of mind.
There are very few of us who have not moments

of the night-lamp — times when we sit down and
X09

no THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

ponder on the mysteries by which we are sur-
rounded. Even the foolish virgins have their
lamps — seasons when the seriousness of life
breaks through the crust of frivolity and makes
them ask the questions which are habitual to
the wise. The satisfactory thing about the
portraying of Nicodemus is not that it recognises
a particular profession, but that it recognises
a secret moment of every human heart. It
lifts the veil from the innermost life of all men
and women, and gives us a glimpse into that sa-
cred shrine which, after all, is the noblest part
of man.

In this picture of Nicodemus there are ex-
hibited three phases of the student mind; one
of them is good, the other two need correc-
tion. We glance at each of these. We begin
with that which I have called good. It is the
tendency expressed in the saying that Nico-
demus ' came to Jesus by night. ' I am aware
this is commonly recorded to his blame; it is
attributed to cowardice. I do not think this
is the idea. I think the idea is, he was so
eager that he could not wait till the morning.

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED iii

And I feel sure that the Fourth Evangelist
has made the historical fact a grand symbol both
of the man Nicodemus and of the student life
in general. Nicodemus waits not for light to
illumine his way. He comes in a thick fog
— groping, stumbling. The portrait, in evi-
dent support of the metaphor, introduces him
in an attitude of deplorable ignorance; he has
come to Christ, lighted by a single star. And
in this the picture symbolises the initial stage of
all inquiry. To every form of truth the student
must come by night ; he must accept evidence
which is less than demonstration. People talk
as if Christianity were in this an exceptional
thing ; they see in its demand for faith an ignor-
ing of the claims of science. But every scien-
tific theory makes the same demand. When
Darwin ventilated the doctrine of Evolution, he
did not say it had been proved. What he did
say in effect was this : * I have found a key
which can unlock many of the doors of this
universe. It is perhaps the key which is meant
to unlock all the doors. I will try. Encour-
aged by the cases I have established, I shall

112 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

start by an act of faith. I shall assume that this
is the one key to the kingdom of Nature. I
shall apply it to the many locks as I have ap-
plied it to the few. It may become Aladdin's
lamp to me — may open the secrets of creation
and unbar the gates of mystery. I shall not
wait to exhaust the facts before I form the
theory; I shall begin with the theory and try
if it will fit the facts. I shall be content to
approach the Temple of Nature with only a
night-lamp in my hand; I shall not linger for
the dawn. '

And this is the true source of all discovery
in every department of life. Take life itself.
With what a very small amount of light we set
out to face the world ! We come to it with cer-
tain theories in our mind — some gathered from
stray testimonies, some derived from the read-
ing of romances. And yet with this slender
equipment we go forth into the dark, not only
without trembling, but full of the most ardent
hope — hope which in the large majority of
cases becomes the very key which opens to us
the door. But it is in the sphere of knowledge

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 113

that the principle is most conspicuously, most
trenchantly true, and specially in that sphere
which we call the knowledge of God. To a
mind encompassed with doubts of a Divine
Presence in the world I would say : ' Follow
the method which originated the doctrine of
Evolution. Start with God as a working hy-
pothesis. Do not search for Him in the uni-
verse, but search the universe through Him.
Begin by assuming Him, Say, I have found in
Him a key which fits several locks; I want to
try it on the other locks. Let your coming be
by night — the night of faith. Do not wait till
the shadows have cleared away and the un-
clouded Divine glory is revealed. Approach
the universe with a theory — the theory that
there is a God. Try the doors with that theory
and see if they will open. You will be sur-
prised at your success. You will have as many
trophies as the doctrine of Evolution — nay,
this theory will explain Evolution itself and
make it intelligible to all men. ' There is no at-
titude of mind so seemly in the student, there
is no search for knowledge at once so scientific

114 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

and so reverent, as that which permits faith
to precede full enlightenment — which allows
man to come by night.

This brings me to the second phase to which
the mind of the student is subject. I mean
the tendency to sink his own individuality in
the life of the race, or what he calls the spirit
of the age. This appears very prominently in
the case of Nicodemus. Other men when they
come into the presence of Jesus address Him
as individual suppliants ; they say, * Have
mercy upon me!' But this man enters into
Christ's presence with quite a unique mode of
address. He accosts Him as if he were speak-
ing in the name of a corporation, as if he had
been deputed to carry a request from a pub-
lic body — ' Master, we know that Thou art
a teacher come from God.' Here again the
popular view is that he is influenced by fear
— the wish not to commit himself to a personal
opinion regarding Christ. My own view is that
he is influenced purely by pride — the pride char-
acteristic of the inquirer. One of the deep-
est desires of every student is to be thought a

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 115

child of his age — up to date, as the phrase goes.
It is a great mistake to think that the tendency
of intellectual youth is personal independence.
Its tendency is the opposite — the identifying
of personal opinion with the view current among
the highest minds. To obtain the reputation of
this identity, to be called a true son of the
time, the inquirer is content to sacrifice origi-
nality. He delights to repeat the opinions of
the scientific, to quote their names, to air their
views; he begins all things with the formula,
* We know. '

Now, this is the position in which I would
place Nicodemus. However ignorant he him-
self was, he belonged to a guild which was re-
garded as the repository of Jewish learning.
With the opinions of that guild he was eager
to identify himself. He did not wish to be
thought peculiar, eccentric. He had no desire
that his coming to Christ should be interpreted
as a mental aberration. He was eager to
make it clear that he was saying nothing which
the Pharisaic party might not thoroughly en-
dorse. His address is virtually a proposal of

ii6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

terms — a statement of the conditions on which
he and his countrymen would be wilhng to
accept Jesus.

You will observe, Jesus resents this corpo-
rate mode of address on the part of Nicodemus.
I used to wonder why, midway in His speech.
He addresses Nicodemus as if he were, not
one man, but a whole company of men — says
* ye ' instead of ' thou. ' But the reason has be-
come clear. Nicodemus has spoken to Jesus
as if he were a collective body of men; Jesus
answers him as if he were a collective body
of men. More striking still is the fact that in
His answer Jesus also assumes a collective
capacity : * Verily, verily, I say unto thee. We
speak what we do know and testify what we
have seen, and ye receive not o?ir witness. ' It
is the only instance I know in the whole New
Testament in which our Lord speaks of Him-
self in the plural number. He says on one oc-
casion, * If a man love Me, My Father will love
him, and We shall come and take up our abode
with him' ; but He is there speaking of two
— Himself and His Father. Here He speaks

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 117

in His own person, but He uses the editorial
* we. ' Can any man fail to see why ! It is a
fine piece of repartee. Nicodemus has identi-
fied himself with his comrades; Christ identi-
fies Himself with His followers. Nicodemus
has appealed to the spirit of an earthly age;
Christ appeals to the spirit of the ages in heaven,
to the mode of thinking which prevails in the
upper sanctuary, to the fashion of a world which
will not pass away.

And let us remember that Christ has here
put His hand upon a real weakness of Nico-
demus and those whom he represents. For
this original tendency of student life is one which
needs to be corrected. Specially does it need to
be corrected in the religious sphere — the sphere
of Nicodemus. The man engaged in a study of
God must beware, above all things, of losing
himself in the crowd. To him at that moment
there is opening a stage of tremendous solem-
nity— the sense of individual responsibility.
In the presence of that thought he should see
the whole multitude go out and leave him,
alone. The spirit of the age should count for

ii8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

nothing, except so far as it corroborates his
own. At that moment, and for that moment,
he should feel himself the only man in the
world, standing before the most august of all
problems, and bound to give an answer from
the depths of his own soul. Nicodemus was
confronting one who had come to reveal this
fact of individual responsibility. Nicodemus
himself had belonged to another regime. The
adherents of the Jewish faith had uniformly
merged the individual in the race. The man
only existed for the sake of the nation. It
was to her that the promises were addressed;
it was to her that the warnings were offered.
The motto of every son of Israel was, ' My life
is my country. ' In the interest of that country
he was to lose himself, in the fate of that coun-
try he was to sink himself. The personal life
was to be absorbed in the patriotic; the indi-
vidual being was to be blended with the exist-
ence of the commonwealth. Judaism was essen-
tially a national religion — the man worshipped
as a part of the nation. There was some excuse
for Nicodemus saying, ' We know. ' But Je-

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 119

sus was to introduce a new regime. He was to
tell the world that in matters of faith every
man was to God a kingdom. He was to pro-
claim that the individual and not the nation
was now to bulk largest in his sight. He was
to proclaim that the Jewish nation would pass
away, but that the man would endure foi
ever. He was to proclaim that the individual
in his hour of religious contemplation ought to
separate himself sharply from his environment.
He was to bid him enter into his silent room and
shut the door and pray to his Father in secret
— as if in all the universe there were none other
than they two. The spirit of the age was to
be forgotten. His fellow-men were to be re-
membered in his sympathy, but were to have
no influence on his example. He was to feel
himself alone — alone with the great problem of
eternity, alone with the presence of God.

Nicodemus learned in this interview with
Jesus the value of an individual soul, the ne-
cessity that it should be lifted into a higher life
and born into a world which was independent
of Jewish heredity. How do we know that he

120 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

learned it? Because we have a record on the
subject. This man appears before us at a later
date and reveals himself in a new attitude. In
the interval the atmosphere has changed. Je-
sus is no longer the object of a kindly and
somewhat contemptuous patronage on the part
of the Sanhedrin. That august body has been
stirred with fear. The movement which at
first seemed capable of being incorporated
within its own boundaries has flashed out in
deadly and irreconcilable antagonism; and the
Jewish Assembly, which yesterday was ready
to propose terms of union, is to-day animated
by only one desire — to crush and annihilate the
rising system. The Sanhedrin is eager to ar-
rest Jesus. It had the penetration to perceive
what many professing Christians have not per-
ceived— that Christianity is Christ, and that
to strike at Christianity you must strike at
Christ. It knew well that, the whole force
of the movement centred in one man, and that
to slay the one man was to destroy the entire
army. Accordingly, this supreme court re-
solves to lay hands on Jesus. But there is one

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 121

dissenting voice — the voice of Nicodemus. It
is the last voice we should have expected.
We are disposed to say, * Is this the man who a
little while ago was eager to sink himself in the
spirit of the age ! ' He now stands forth op-
posed to the age — stands out as a solitary indi-
vidual breasting the waves of a crowd, and cries
with fearless love of justice, * Does our law
judge any man before it hears him!' We
marvel at the spectacle. It is not that we see a
growing stature — we expect time to bring that.
It is that we witness a transformation. Nico-
demus has changed his weakness into a strength.
He has become strong in the very point in which
he was defective. On the night in which he
stood before Jesus he was unwilling to be alone;
on the day in which he stands before the San-
hedrin he is unwilling to be in company. He
asserts the right of his own individual soul.
He is a fine example of the difference between
what is called nature and what is called grace.
Nature can improve a man; grace transforms
him.

I come now to the third tendency in the life

122 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

of the inquirer. It is the pride of reason. As
applied to Christianity it takes the form of
trying to prove Christ from the outside — by
something not connected with His nature. We
see this with Nicodemus. He says, ' We know
that Thou art a teacher come from God, for no
man can do these miracles that Thou doest
except God be with him. ' The answer of
Christ is striking and graphic — ' Verily, verily,
I say unto thee. Except a man be born again
he cannot see the kingdom of God. ' The
words, as I take it, are strongly antithetical.
Our Lord says : ' Nicodemus, you claim to
have arrived at knowledge. A man makes a
great profession when he says, I know. There
is something which must come before knowl-
edge, and that is sight. Unless a man is born
with a special faculty, he cannot even see my
kingdom — much less understand it. You cannot
reach the sense of my power by a ladder of
demonstration — though you should mount for
ages and ages. But you may reach it in a mo-
ment, in the twinkling of an eye, if only you
can find the wings of my spirit. If it come to

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 123

you at all it must come in a flash, in a thrill
of intuition, in a glance of the soul. It must
be see7t, not proved; and the man who sees
it gives evidence that he has been born into a
world with larger powers than are at the command
of earth. '

We may illustrate the position of Nicodemus
by one coming to an artist and saying, * I know
that the city of Edinburgh is beautiful, because,
if otherwise, every one would not have agreed
to call it so. ' What would the artist reply }
Would he not say : ' My friend, your testimony
is absolutely valueless. It adds nothing to the
weight of Edinburgh's prestige. To have any
value, your testimony must be founded on sight.
It must be independent of any other witness.
You must be convinced by your own vision —
convinced with equal strength though all other
witnesses were contrary. You must be able to
feel that the beauty of Edinburgh to you needs,
no vindication, that you would deem it as fair
if all the world contemned it, that it shines to
you by its own light and holds the evidence of
its own glory. '

124 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

The words of our Lord to Nicodemus have
often been deemed mystical. I see in them
neither mysticism nor mystery. Christianity is
no exception when it says, * He who would know
me must be born into my spirit' There is
not a study in the world which would not say
that. Have you ever asked yourself what is the
first requirement for any study.-* A knowledge
of facts.? That is very essential, but it is not
the earliest thing. A power of acute reason-
ing? That is also very essential, but it comes
into use still later than the facts. There is
something behind these, earlier than these, and
that is the spirit of the study itself. Before a
man can even begin to inquire, he must ask
himself. Am I in sympathy with the subject?
— that question must precede all investigation
of facts and all lines of reasoning. It matters
not what the kingdom be, our first step must
be made here. Take the kingdom of art. A
man might buy all the pictures in a gallery,
might commit to memory their various sub-
jects, might learn their date and authorship,
might study the lives of their different painters.

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 125

might even combine the scattered threads of
his information into a connected narrative em-
bodying the rational sequence of the artistic
history; but all this would be only the outside.
One touch of inward sympathy would make him
independent of all these things. He could dis-
pense with historical knowledge. He could
dispense with financial expenditure. He could
dispense with efforts of memory. He could feed
upon a single picture — though he knew not its
name, though he knew not its author, though
he could not identify any one of its figures. A
very small amount of influence from without is
sufficient to stimulate the spirit.

Now, the error of Nicodemus was that he
sought Christ for something on the outside.
He came to Him for what He wore — that was
the sting of the position. He was attracted to
Christ by His miracles. This was to Christ quite
equivalent to saying, ' I love you for the dress
you wear. ' There lies the reason for the stern-
ness with which He speaks to Nicodemus. If
Nicodemus had come and said, ' Master, I can-
not believe in your miracles unless I have seen

126 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

them, but I am already convinced of your Di-
vine beauty,' Jesus would have received him
very differently; for the only power He valued
was the power of the spirit, and He felt that
the power of His spirit was something which
flesh and blood could not reveal.

But here again Nicodemus has a magnificent
counterpart. We have seen how grandly the
previous tendency was reversed, transformed.
We have seen how the man who clung to the
fashion of his age became the man who could
stand to his opinion unbefriended and alone.
We are now to see a greater transformation still.
This man who at the beginning accepted
Christ's miracles and ignored His Divine beauty
was able in the end to ignore His miracles and
accept His beauty ! In the latest recorded scene
in which he appears before us he comes in a
deeper and darker night than that in which
he first sought the Lord. Jesus is dead. All
the Messianic hopes seem faded in the dust.
The hosannahs are hushed, the palm-leaves are
withered, the friends of summer days have
made their flight in the winter. It was a time

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 127

when, if the first view of Nicodemus had been
right, God must have deserted Jesus. All
power had vanished from Him — even the power
to live. There He lay — shorn of His outward
beams, denuded of His visible glory, stripped
of the robe of earthly royalty! And it was
at this moment that Nicodemus came. He
came to do homage to the dead, to embalm the
body of the prostrate Lord. He brought myrrh
and aloes of a hundred-pound weight — far more
than could possibly be used for the purpose.
It was like the woman's alabaster box — the
prodigality of love. And, like the pouring out
of that ointment, it was an anointing for burial.
He recognised Christ's majesty in death — this
man who had begun with the love of the exter-
nal ! He saw His glory in the night ; he beheld
His chariot in a cloud; he discerned His king-
dom under the trappings of the grave! It was
a grand act, worthy to constitute our last
glimpse of the man. It was an act, moreover,
which lends to the picture of Christ's life a
strange poetic consistency. Twice in that pic-
ture do we see the myrrh laid at the unconscious

128 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

feet of Jesus; and both tributes are given by
inquiring minds. The first offering was laid
before the infant by the Persian Magi ; the sec-
ond was made to the dead Christ by the Jew-
ish Nicodemus. To me there is something beau-
tiful in the thought that, amid all the selfish
approaches to Jesus, amid all the crowds that
sought Him only for what He could bestow,
there were some who recognised Him in the
days of His weakness, and paid their tribute to
a sense of inward beauty. The myrrh presented
in the manger and the myrrh lavished on Cal-
vary are the truest embalming of the greatness
of our Lord.

IT is Thy death that has embalmed Thee, O
* Christ. Many things have glonfied^\ThQt\
but death has embalmed Thee. The myrrh and
the aloes have remained in Thy sepulchre. No-
where dost Thou live in memory so bright as in
the valley of the shadow. In a deeper sense
than Nicodemus, we come to Thee * by night. '
Not in Thy miracles art Thou embalmed, but
where Thy miracles have ceased. We have seen

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 129

Thy beauty where the world saw only Thy weak-
ness; Thou hast survived where men thought
Thee most unfit. We have brought our crown
to Thy discrowned brow; we have put our
trust in Thine unsceptred hand. We have kept
our spices for Thy grave. We have not scat-
tered them on Hermon where mighty words
were spoken; we have not spread them in the
wilderness where wondrous bread was broken ;
we have not left them on the Transfiguration
Mount which gave Thee heaven's token. We
have passed these by. We have laid the myrrh
and aloes upon the altar of Thy sacrifice.
We have brought our faith to Thy seeming fee-
bleness, our prayer to Thine apparent power-
lessness. We have drawn courage from Thy
crucifixion, strength from Thy stripes, wealth
from Thy wounds, boldness from Thy blood.
We have seen Thy kingdom in the cloud, Thine
empire in the embers, Thy power in the unbeat-
ing pulse, Thy glory in the grave-clothes. Thy
victory in the hour of vanquishment. Thy des-
tiny coming from the dust. We pay our trib-
ute to Thy cross. We lay our myrrh and aloes

I30 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

where the old world laid its scorn — upon Thy
broken heart ; but one who once belonged to that
world meets us at the garden gate and cries,
' You have done well. ' It is the voice of Nico-
demus.

CHAPTER VII

THOMAS THE CONVINCED

There are two classes of minds which habitu-
ally stand in the post of outlook — the man of
the laurel and the man of the cypress. The
first sees the world as rose-coloured. It is all
brightness, all beauty, all glory — a scene of splen-
did possibilities which is waiting to open for him
its gates of gold. The second, on the other hand,
approaches it with dismay. To him the pros-
pect looks all dark. He is a pessimist previ-
ous to experience. He is sure he will never suc-
ceed. He is sure the gate will not open when he
tries it. He feels that he has nothing to ex-
pect from life. He hangs his harp upon a wil-
low, and goes forth to sow in tears.

And each of these has a representative in the
New Testament. I think the man of the laurel

is the evangelist John. From the very begin-
131

132 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

ning he is optimistic. Even when Christ was
on the road to that martyrdom of which He
had warned His disciples, John is so sanguine
of success that he applies for a place in the
coming kingdom. And through life this opti-
mism does not desert him. His very power to
stand beside the cross was a power of hope. It
was not that he excelled his brother-disciples in
the nerve to bear pain. It was rather that to
him the spectacle conveyed an impression of
less pain — that he saw in it elements of triumph
as well as trial, signs of strength along with
marks of sacrifice.

But if the man of the laurel is John, the man
of the cypress is assuredly Thomas. There are
men whose melancholy is the result of their
scepticism; Thomas's scepticism is the result
of his melancholy. He came to the facts of
life with an antecedent prejudice; he uniformly
expected from the banquet an inferior menu.
It is a great mistake to imagine that the collapse
came with the Crucifixion. Strictly speaking,
there was no collapse. If I understand the pic-
ture aright, it represents the figure of a man

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 133

who could never stand at his full stature but
was always bent towards the ground. It was
not from timidity. He was a courageous man,
ready to do and dare anything even when he was
most downcast. It was not from a mean na-
ture. He was a man of the noblest spirit — capa-
ble of the most heroic deeds of sacrifice. That
which gave him a crouching attitude was simply
a constitutional want of hope — a natural in-
ability to take the bright view. It was this
which made him a sceptic. He was indisposed
to give anything a trial. When the disciples
assembled at their first spiritual seance in the
hope of getting a vision of their risen Lord, he
refused to attend;' when told that a vision
had been given, he refused to believe it. It
was too good news to be true. He would have
believed the story of an earthquake or a pesti-
lence or a shipwreck; but he could not credit
the earth with the power to witness a scene of
glory.

' I think the same religious hopelessness would keep
him from attending the meeting for silent individual
prayer in Gethsemane ; I do not believe he was one of
those who fled that night.

134 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Now, the question which arises is this, Why
is Thomas so leniently treated? He demands as
an evidence of the risen Christ that very kind
of proof which the Pharisees had demanded as
an evidence of the Divine Christ — a physical
sign. We know how Christ treated the Phari-
saic demand, how He had said, ' An evil and adul-
terous generation seeketh after a sign, and there
shall no sign be given unto it. ' Is it thus that
our Lord meets Thomas .-' On the contrary.
He grants his request — not perhaps without re-
proach, but certainly without loss of tenderness;
He bids him put forth his hand and touch the
material sign — the print of the nails. There must
have been something in Thomas which won
upon Christ, which made the request in his
case comparatively harmless. What was it .'' It
is a question well worthy of our consideration.
We are familiar with the saying that circum-
stances alter cases; it is equally true that per-
sons alter cases. The boon of a physical sign
denied to the Jewish nation is granted to a Jew-
ish individual. There must have been some-
thing in that individual which to the eye of the

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 135

Master changed the complexion of the case and
rendered it possible to relax the rigidness of the
rule.

And a moment's reflection will convince us
that in the picture of Thomas we have a speci-
men quite unique in the male section of Christ's
first hearers — a figure which must have been
unique even to Jesus Himself. For consider,
the natural melancholy of this man made his
approach to Christ an unselfish one. He ex-
pected nothing from the world — nothing from
a world even under the auspices of Christ.
Yet he came to Christ — -spite of this absence
of physical expectation. Whatever drew him
to the Master, it could have been nothing ex-
ternal. Here was something fresh and new. All
around Him Christ saw men who came on the
chance of a physical glory. The sign they
asked was not so much a sign of Christ as a
sign of their own felicity. Even the circle of
the apostolic band was pervaded by the hope
of a physical glory. With some it took the
form of Messianic conquest; with others, like
Simon Peter, it assumed the aspect of an earthly

136 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Paradise far from the din of men. But what-
ever form it took, it had always the same es-
sence— outward reward. The Christ was meas-
ured by His power to change the present order
of physical things — to place two ignorant fisher-
men at the right hand of heaven, to bid the
stones be turned into bread, to change earth's
water into plenteous wine, and expand the few
loaves into food for the million.

But here is a man who approaches Jesus in
a totally different attitude. He was a man of
the cypress — a man to whom the world did not
present possibilities. I do not say it did not
present attractions; but where attractions are
believed to be beyond our reach they have no
motive power. It is a proverbial saying that an
infant cries for the moon. But the infant cries
for the moon because it believes that luminary to
be within its reach; if it had a contrary belief,
we are absolutely safe in stating that it would
not cry. All aspiration is born of hope. If I
believe an object to be beyond the stretch of
my arm, I do not stretch my arm towards it.
It is equally true with the things of the heart.

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 137

I do not make an effort to attain that which I
know to be entirely above me; desire, in such
cases, is paralysed on the threshold. And
such I conceive to be the case of Thomas. He
looked at the world from under his cypress-tree,
and he pronounced it an impossible world —
a world whose gates of promotion and whose
doors of promise were not for him. He had too
keen a sense of life's difficulties to be impelled
by any worldly hope in Christ, and therefore
he never could have joined Christ for any such
motive. Yet he did join Him. He threw in
his lot with Jesus and accompanied His train.
Why.'* So must have asked the Son of Man
Himself; and the answer His mind gave must
have been refreshing in the extreme. Amid
the many who came to Him for His surround-
ings, here was one who came to Him for Him-
self. Christ beheld in Thomas a devotion to
His person. Had he recognised in the Mas-
ter some of his own cypress leaves — something
which prevented Him from having fulness of
joy } I cannot tell ; but I know that the man of
depression drew close to the Man of Sorrows,

138 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

and I feel that the bond between them was
stronger than any material chain.

In this portrait of Thomas I think there are
revealed two things of great significance. We
see a Christian love in the absence of a Chris-
tian creed; and we see what is more remark-
able still — a Christian faith in the absence of
a Christian creed. Let us look at each of
these separately.

And first. Let us take one central incident
in the portraiture of Thomas. Perhaps if the
question were asked, What is the most central
incident in the portraiture of Thomas.? the
majority would answer, * The touching of the
nail-prints.' That is not my opinion. I think
the circumstance which most broadly marks the
character of Thomas is his attitude towards
Jesus on hearing of the death of Lazarus. Let
us review the facts for a moment.

There has been a commotion in the streets
of Jerusalem. The transition of Jesus from the
work of a reformer to the work of a theologian
has produced also a transition in the feelings
of the multitude. They pass at a bound from

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 139

applause to reprobation. Goaded by the sugges-
tion of heresy in His teaching, they assail Him
with stones. The majesty of Christ's presence
saves Him — paralyses the directness of their
aim. Evading the fury of the populace, He
retires into a secluded place, and for some time
is visible only to His disciples. At last, to this
desert spot come tidings of the death of Laza-
rus. Then Jesus resolves to return. The dis-
ciples are startled — on His account and their
own. They are very unwilling to come into the
vicinity of a place which had been so fraught
with fear, so full of danger. Jesus, for His
part, is determined. He says, 'I go. ' He
does not ask any one to accompany Him; He
simply expresses His personal resolve. Then
through the silence one man speaks out for
the company — ' Let us also go, that we may
die with Him ! ' It is the voice of Thomas.

Now, I say that this utterance of Thomas
reveals at one and the same moment the deep-
est scepticism and the highest love. The scep-
ticism does not lie in his expectation of Christ's
death. That was the very thing which Christ

140 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

wished His disciples to expect, nay, to build
their hopes upon. But the scepticism of
Thomas comes out in the belief that the death
of Jesus would be the death of His kingdom.

* Let us go, that we may die with Him. ' The
man who uttered these words had, at the time
when he uttered them, no hope of Christ's res-
urrection. No man would propose to die with
another if he expected to see him again in a
few hours. Thomas, at that moment, had given
up all intellectual belief. He saw no chance
for Jesus. He did not believe in His physical
power. He had made up his mind that the
forces of the outer world would be too strong
for Him, would crush Him. The penitent said
to the dying Lord, ' Remember me when Thou
comest in Thy kingdom. ' Thomas could not
say that ; he saw no kingdom beyond the death ;
he could only cry, ' Let me die with Him ! '

But what a cry was that! It was the voice
of a boundless love. The natural sequence to
the view held by Thomas would have been,

* The game is lost ; save yourselves v;ho can ! '
The average man would have said, * Our Master

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 141

is bent on a course which must inevitably end
in the ruin of His cause; it now becomes im-
perative that we should provide for ourselves.'
Thomas says, on the contrary, ' It now becomes
imperative that I should share His ruin — die
with Him.' It is what I would call the logic
of love — a kind of reasoning which on any other
ground would be deemed absurd. It never oc-
curred to Thomas that there could be a possibiU
ity of separation between his interests and the in-
terests of his Master. In his mind they were one.
He would have been glad to have shared in His
good fortune had good fortune been His lot;
but since the cypress and not the laurel had
been His, the only remaining consolation was
the possibility of being overtaken by the same
storm and crushed in the same ruin. I know
not in all the opening life of the apostolic band
where to look for such a form of love. To find
it in the primitive Gospel I must go out of
that band. To meet with a perfect analogy I
must go to those women who followed Jesus
from the obscurity of Galilee to the obsequies
of the grave. I think they were animated by

r42 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the love that dwelt within the heart of Thomas
— the love which could exist even amid the be-
lief that Christ had no outward sun. I think
these women believed that Christ had no out-
ward sun. They came to the sepulchre ; but it
was not because they looked for His resurrec-
tion; it was to anoint His body with the spices.
Their whole solicitude was for the preservation
of the body ; ' They have taken away my Lord, '
cries one of them, * and I know not where
they have laid Him ! ' They never would have
brought the spices if they had expected a resur-
rection. Why anoint a body for the grave which
the grave in a few hours was to yield up to life
and liberty ! The bringing of the spices was
the highest proof of their shattered creed, and
it was at the same moment the strongest evi-
dence of their deathless love. They had taken
up at the last the uncrowned Christ whom
they had accepted at the beginning, and they
had lavished upon Him all the treasure of their
hearts. To these feminine souls Thomas Mras
more allied than to any of the first apostles in
their first days. He was drawn to the Master

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 143

by something which the world could neither
give nor take away; he had not expected the
crown and he was not repelled by the cross.

But this same fact has a second aspect. It
not only reveals a Christian love existing in
the absence of a creed, but a Christian faith
existing in the absence of a creed. For, let us
understand distinctly what that was for which
Thomas was prepared to die. It was an ideal.
Paul says there is a faith which worketh by
love. The love of Thomas reveals such a faith.
What he proposed to die for was really a be-
lief— the belief that death with Jesus was better
than life without Him. I would call this a
dogma of love as distinguished from a dogma
of knowledge. It was an article of faith pre-
scribed by the heart and enshrined in the book
of the affections. Thousands of martyrs have
died for their faith in Jesus; Thomas was will-
ing to do so too. What is the difference be-
tween the faith of Thomas and the faith of the
martyrs ? It is this : The martyrs saw the sac-
rifice from under the laurel; Thomas contem-
plated it from beneath the cypress. The mar-

144 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

tyrs had their eye upon the rainbow; Thomas
looked upon the cloud. The martyrs were con-
vinced, not only of Christ's spiritual beauty,
but of His physical power; Thomas was satis-
fied only of the former. The martyrs beheld
an eternity beyond; Thomas did not. Hence
the martrys really said, ' Let us die for Him ' ;
Thomas exclaimed, ' Let us die with Him. '
It is the difference between optimism and pessi-
mism ; but it is not a difference in the intensity
of faith. When I say, * I believe in that man, '
I express my confidence in the man himself —
confidence in his honour, in his uprightness, in
his integrity of character. If I should be obliged
to entertain dark views about his worldly pros-
pects, this will sadden me, but it will in no wise
shake my faith. My faith was not in his worldly
prospects, but in himself — in my ideal of the
man; and that ideal will remain unbroken, un-
dimmed, unaltered, by any contingency that can
befall his fortunes.

But behind this cry of Thomas there is some-
thing more — something which gives his faith
an aspect higher than he himself knew. For,

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 145

what was this determination to die with Jesus?
It was really an unconscious act of homage to
the majesty of a human soul. He was declaring,
not by word but by deed, that mind is greater
than matter, nay, that a single mind can to him
outweigh all the material glories of the universe
— its suns and its systems, its silver and its gold.
The man whose deed could say that, was very
near the hope of immortality. He might call
himself an agnostic, an unbeliever, a man with-
out a creed; but the mental act of sacrifice to
the majesty of mind proclaimed him not far
from the vision of eternal life. I do not wonder
that Jesus offered him an aid to the belief in
resurrection. It was worth while to help such
a soul. He was nearer to the belief in res-
urrection than many who professed it. He
had not seen the city of gold ; but he had seen
the transcendent beauty of the human soul.
To have the vision of such a beauty is to be
more than half-way to the happy land of Beulah.
There are a greater number in the world like
Thomas than the world dreams of. There are
those whom we call secularists, nay, who call

146 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

themselves so. They say, * Never mind look-
ing beyond the skies; let us attend to the
wants of our brother-man; let us surrender our
lives to the life of humanity ! ' And many of
these labour in that cause with great success.
But why? It is because, like Thomas, they
think man more worth serving than matter.
There is more in their heart than in their cate-
chism. Their catechism says, * Do not look
beyond the earth ' ; but their eye has in an un-
conscious moment already looked beyond and
seen that humanity is more than common clay.
Living philanthropy is latent faith.

I have been endeavouring to account for the
problem involved in that wonderful episode of
the Picture where Thomas is represented as ask-
ing a special sign that Christ has risen — ' Ex-
cept I shall see in His hands the print of the
nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will
not believe.' The problem lies in the fact that
the request is granted — that Christ in the case of
Thomas departs from His usual practice of dis-
couraging speculative curiosity. But where we
err is in attributing that spirit to Thomas. I

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 147

have heard Thomas described again and again as
a speculative mind — a mind seeking to dive into
the secrets of the future. A more unfair view
of his position is not to be conceived. Per-
haps he was the least speculative of all the apos-
tles, and for the very reason that he was the
least hopeful. Speculation is inspired by hope.
it was hope that made Peter see his vision at
Joppa. It was hope that gave John his vision
at Patmos. It was hope that opened to Paul
a glimpse of the highest heaven. But Thomas
was not a man of hope; he was a man of de-
spair. Curiosity was no part of his nature.
His cry for a sign of the risen Christ was not
really a cry for the resurrection; the present
life had not been so bright to him as to make
him interested in another. But what he was
interested in was the survival of his Lord Him-
self. What cried out for satisfaction was not
his curiosity but his love. The sign he asked
was a sign that his Master was alive — a sign that
he could meet Him again, speak to Him again,
commune with Him again. Thomas had no
wish to lift the curtain of eternity. He was

148 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

content to remain in ignorance of what 'the
angels desire to look into.'' All he wanted was
to be convinced that his Lord was in the land
of the living by the touch of a vanished hand
and the sound of a voice that had been still.

And Christ granted him that conviction.
* Reach hither thy finger, ' He says, ' and be-
hold My hands, and thrust thy hand into My
side, and be not faithless but believing ' ; and
with a great cry love recognises its object and
clasps its restored treasure. But even in his
moment of transport Thomas receives an inti-
mation that the sign which he asked was not the
best thing — ' Because thou hast seen, thou hast
believed ; blessed are they that have not seen and
yet have believed. ' What does Christ mean by
these words .'' It is worth while asking, for
they express the reason of His habitual unwill-
ingness to reveal Himself by material signs.
Are we to understand that it is a more blessed
thing to believe on slender evidence than on
grounds of assured conviction } This is, I think,
the common interpretation. The value of faith
is supposed to lie in its want of credentials.

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 149

One of the Church fathers says, ' I believe,
because it is impossible. ' It reminds one of the
familiar story of a little girl in a Sunday-school
who, when asked to define * faith, ' wrote this
answer — ' It is the power to believe something
which you know to be false.' But our Lord's
view here is just the opposite of this. When
He says, ' Blessed are they that have not seen
and yet have believed,' He means that they are
blessed because their faith rests on higher evi-
dence— the evidence not of the sense but of the
soul. The writer of the Acts says that Christ
burst the bands of death because it was not pos-
sible death should hold Him. This is what I call
unseen evidence — his Christ was not immortal
because He rose from the grave; He rose from
the grave because He was immortal. If the
rising had taken place unknown to any human
soul, it would not have altered this man's opin-
ion. Christ and death were to him two irrecon-
cilable quantities; he could not think of them
together. His formula would be, not * the Res-
urrection proves Christ, ' but ' Christ proves the
Resurrection.' That is a faith which Christ

ISO THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

pronounces, which we must pronounce, blessed.
To feel that the life of Jesus is its own witness,
that the purity of His heart is bound to see
the King in His beauty, that the self-surrender
of His spirit ensures Him the kingdom of heaven,
that His mourning for sin demands in the here-
after a compensating comfort, that His meek-
ness merits a future inheritance, that His hunger
and thirst after man's righteousness has a claim
to be filled ' in the sweet by and by ' — this is
a faith which rests upon a rock impregnable,
and compared to whose blessedness the sight of
material wonders is poor indeed.

LORD, there are times in which my experi-
ence is the experience of Thomas. There
are days when I hear not the bells of Easter
Morn. I tread the road to Emmaus, and I
meet not the risen Christ. I call to the five
hundred brethren, and they answer not. I
stand on the mountain of Galilee, and there
comes no voice amid the breezes. I sail on Gen-
nesaret's lake, and I see no vision. I fre-
quent the upper room, and get no hint of His

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 151

presence. My faith cannot walk by sight in
hours like these. What shall I do at such
times, O Lord ! Hast Thou a remedy for the
loss of light.'' Yes, my Father. Thou hast a
gate where faith can enter without seeing where
it goes; its name is Love. Lead me by that
gate when my eye is dim ! When I cannot
follow Him to Olivet, let me worship Him on
Calvary ! When betimes I lose sight of His
risen form, do not shut me out from the bearing
of His name ! In the days when immortal hope
is dim, make room in my heart for immortal
memory ! If I cannot soar with Him into heav-
en, let me at least go back to finish His work on
earth ! Let me gather the fragments of the
cross which remain on the Dolorous Way ! Let
me distribute of the twelve baskets which were
not served in the wilderness ! Let me take
up His burden at the spot where He was too
faint to carry it ! Let me mourn with the
Marthas whose Lazarus I cannot raise ! Let me
pray with the paralytics whose weakness I can-
not cure ! Let me sing to the sightless whose
eyes I cannot open ! Let me lend to the lepers

152 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the touch of a brother's hand! Let me find for
the fallen a chance to renew their days ! Then
shall my evidence come back — brighter, strong-
er. Then shall my Easter Morn shine again
through the clouds of night. Then shall I
know the meaning of these words: 'Blessed
are they that have not seen, and yet have be-
lieved. '

CHAPTER VIII

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED

A COLOURLESS facc may have very strong feat-
ures. There are faces in the New Testament
Gallery whose colourlessness repels us. We
wonder how they have found their way into
such an august company. To drop the meta-
phor, their lives seem devoid of incident. Their
names occur but once or twice on the Sacred
Page, and in a connection apparently so trivial
as to leave nothing worth transmitting. But
as we look longer and closer, we change our
mind. We feel as if suddenly a microscope
had been put into our hand. The seeming
trifle assumes magnitude, the passing reference
becomes big with suggestion, the commonplace
statement is found to be full of significance;
and the man who at first appeared a mere

cipher takes his place among the leading men of
153

1 54 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the Gallery and the representative men of the
world.

One of the best instances of this is, I think,
to be found in Philip of Bethsaida. The com-
mon impression is that we know nothing about
him. For a long time I studied his counte-
nance in vain. It seemed expressionless, char-
acterless. No ray flashed from the eye to
awaken human interest. The man appeared a
lay figure placed in the group merely to fill up
a gap. Was there any personality about him
— anything worth converting, worth transmit-
ting, worth transforming.-* At first one was
disposed to answer. No. Yet I felt that my
impression must be wrong. This man was
sought out by Jesus Himself. He was the first
who ever heard the Christian command, ' Fol-
low me ! ' Jesus sought those who were sick
— physically, morally, or mentally. His seek-
ing of Philip implied that there was something
to remove. I felt that this * something ' must
be indicated, and that if I searched long enough
I ought to find it. I did search, long and
patiently, and I think I have found it — have

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 155

discovered that element in Philip which ren-
dered him a man requiring the Master's care
and representing through all time one section
of mankind.

The question then is, What is, in Philip's
case, the stone which had to be rolled from the
door of the sepulchre, in other words, what was
the original imperfection of his nature? We
have seen the moral impediments of others —
how the Baptist needed expansion, John self-
forgetfulness, Peter courage, Nathanael ro-
bustness, Nicodemus instruction, Thomas hope.
What did Philip need? Can we put our hand
upon his barrier? Can we tell the nature of
that moral struggle which raises his life from
insignificance to interest, and gives him a per-
manent place among the great cloud of wit-
nesses ?

I think we can. It seems to me that the
moral impediment of Philip was an illusion about
the nature of the religious life. He thought
religion was something above the common plain.
It was too serious a matter to be concerned in
the ordinary duties of the world, too solemn a

156 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

thing to be brought down to streets and * open-
ings of the gates.' By all means the duties
of the hour should be attended to, but they
ought to have their own agencies. Religion
should be made to dwell in a higher and purer
atmosphere. It should be kept for ecstatic mo-
ments in which the world can be forgotten and
time can be no more — moments in which the
soul is carried right into the presence of its
God, and hears things which cannot be spoken
amid the duties of the earthly day. At such
times the world must drop from a man like
Elijah's garment, and all his mundane responsi-
bilities must be overshadowed by another and
a higher life.

Why do I think that this was the original
view of Philip? From two episodes in his
history, both recorded in the Fourth Gospel.
Nothing can exceed the apparent difference be-
tween these two episodes. The one is at the
breaking of bread in the wilderness; the other
occurs at that solemn hour when Christ in His
farewell sermon was raising the thoughts of
His disciples to the sources of spiritual peace.

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 157

The one is in the sphere of the secular; the
other is in the region which men call sacred.
The one is concerned with the wants of the
body; the other is occupied with the needs of
the soul. The one is a scene of philanthropy;
the other is a scene of piety. In both of these
opposite episodes Philip is a prominent figure.
And yet I have no hesitation in saying that
in each of them he has one and the same
attitude. In each of these varied circum-
stances we find the man subject to the same
illusion — the belief that religion is something
too high and holy to be identified with the
good works of common day. I think this will
become evident if we consider the episodes
separately.

I begin with the earlier. Jesus has crossed
the Sea of Tiberias and has reached its eastern
shore. Great crowds are coming in the same
direction — some from the scattered ranks of the
Baptist, some consisting of the pilgrims to the
Passover at Jerusalem. Both are naturally
drawn to Jesus — the disciples of the Baptist
by a kindred association, the Passover pilgrims

iS8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

by a spirit of devotion. We should have thought
Jesus would have grasped the moment as one
eminently adapted to the spread of His doc-
trines. Strange to say, His whole interest is
bent upon something else. He thinks entirely
of the physical wellbeing of that crowd. They
must already be hungry and faint with their
journey. If they are to interrupt that journey
to listen to Him, they will be more faint and
hungry still. Accordingly, Christ's primal care
is for their bodies, their food, their nourish-
ment. He intends that before all things they
shall receive provision for their temporal wants.
But He is not content to achieve that; He
wishes His disciples to go along with Him, to
sympathise with Him. And so, He starts a
problem of political economy — How shall we
procure food for this multitude; is there any
neighbouring store from which we can buy.-' It
is Philip that He addresses — probably because
He feels that Philip is the most likely to be
surprised at such a human interest on His
part. Phihp's answer is certainly not sympa-
thetic— * It is impossible ; even if you could get

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 159

two hundred pennyworth of loaves it would not
suffice to give a small amount to each; the
scheme must be abandoned. '

For this answer Philip has reaped much ob-
loquy. The obloquy is just; but I think it is
bestowed on wrong grounds. Philip is blamed
for losing faith in the Messianic power of Jesus
— a power in which originally he strongly be-
lieved. But I do not think this was really his
position. This man was no sceptic about the
claims of Christ. He had not lost one jot
of his faith in the Messianic mission of Jesus.
Where he erred was in denying to that Mes-
sianic mission a right to be interested in what
he called trifles. It is another form of the ob-
jection to the blessing pronounced on the lit-
tle children. The love for children was all
right, and the nurture and admonition of chil-
dren were desirable; but to single them out
as a section of Christ's army, to ordain them
publicly to a great Messianic work — this was
something which seemed incongruous with the
Christ. So did the proposal in the wilderness.
Benevolence was good and the wants of the

i6o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

poor a legitimate subject of solicitude; but it
was deemed a subject for the economist, for
the capitalist, for the citizen. It was surely
no part of the province of Messiah Himself!
Was it not a thing for His agents, His sub-
ordinates! Was not the Messiah's work cos-
mopolitan — concerned with momentous issues
and big with solemn interests! It could never
be expected that He should interrupt that
work to give personal attention to a trifle of the
hour!

I feel sure that this, and not want of faith,
was the motive of Philip's answer to Jesus.
It was his opinion that Jesus would not think
it worth while to manifest His power in a scene
so humble. And I believe that in His subse-
quent act of political economy the design of
Jesus was to counteract this impression. The
narrative as given by St. John clearly implies
that Jesus intended here to make Himself the
subject of a special revelation. But what about
Himself did He wish to reveal.'' Was it the
fact that He had power to expand a meagre re-
past into a great banquet ? No ; it was the fact

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED i6i

that He had the will to do so, that He did not
deem it beneath His dignity to do so. That
was what He wanted the multitude to learn;
that was what He wanted Philip to learn; that
was wjiat He desired the world of all times to
learn. We have still our Philips among us —
men of devout faith who yet by their very devo-
tion divide God too much from man. To all
such the old narrative carries the eternal moral
that the God of the telescope must be the
God of the microscope too, and that the Power
which guides the Pleiades must be able to direct
a sparrow's wing. The later Isaiah says of God,
* He calleth the stars all by name ; because He
is great in power not one faileth. ' The Philips
of the world would have inverted the state-
ment, would have said, ' Because He is great
in power He cannot be expected to take care
of individuals.' But the words of the prophet
are held true also by the evolutionist, and re-
ligion has here found an ally in science. The
claim of seeming trifles to be subjects of Uni-
versal Law is one of the greatest lessons this
world has ever received.

i62 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

I come now to the second episode which in-
dicates the limitation in the character of Philip.
It occurs in a totally different direction, but
it reveals the same tendency. The scene is
that hour between the Passover and Geth-
semane when Jesus delivers His parting mes-
sage. It is distinctively a message to the troubled
heart. Other messages had been addressed
to different sides of human nature. Some had
been spoken to the troubled body ; they had
brought the words of healing. Some had been
spoken to the troubled conscience; they had
breathed the words of pardon. Some had been
spoken to the troubled spirit — troubled as to
where lay its road to duty; they had pointed,
like the Sermon on the Mount, to a life of sac-
rifice. But this last message of our Lord was
spoken to the troubled heart. It was a season
of bereavement. The disciples were losing
the object of their dearest love. For the first
time perhaps in their lives, their souls were in-
tent on the problem of immortality. Therefore
it is of immortality that Christ speaks. He
tells them of a life beyond, of a place which He

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 163

is about to prepare for them in the mansions of
heaven. He tells them that He is going to no
foreign scene, but to the house of His Father.
He tells them that neither will they find it for-
eign— that they will be where He is, and so
have a sense of home. But Christ's deep teach-
ing had taught these men to be critical. They
begin to question — they ask how they are to
get there, and where the region lies. Then
Philip makes a bold proposal. He suggests a
method by which all doubts will be lulled to
rest. Let Christ give them a vision of the
Father — of the Father Himself — of the primal
source of all being, without any intermediate
veil. You will observe the thoroughness of the
demand. He wants no manifestation from the
stage — Jesus had given many such. He wants
to get behind the scenes, to get into the green-
room, to know the private counsels which
guide the drama of life. He is determined
to go to the root of the matter, and the root of
the matter is to him the beginning of crea-
tion, ' Lord, show us the Father, and it suffi-
ceth. '

1 64 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Now, there is one respect in which Philip
was right. He was right in thinking that our
best evidence of immortahty comes from the
vision of the Father. I cannot understand how
any man who has a firm conviction of the
fatherhood of God can be sceptical about the
immortality of the soul. Remember, I speak
of the fatherhood of God. I do not think the
mere belief in an author of the universe is suf-
ficient to bring the conviction of human immor-
tality. We have seen men iike Francis New-
man accepting the existence of a Supreme Power
and yet refusing their assent to the other doc-
trine. No man would be entitled to say, * Show
us that there is an unknown power in the uni,
verse, and it sufficeth. ' But every man is
entitled to say, * Show us the Father, and
it suflficeth. ' It was not there that the fault of
Philip lay; Christ's answer virtually admits
that he was right. The highest evidence of
immortality is the vision of a God who has a re-
lation to the human soul. The very incomplete-
ness of that soul then becomes an argument in
its favour. For, in the light of Divine father-

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 165

hood, we say, ' God will not leave His structure
unfinished; He must have determined to finish
it elsewhere.' Tennyson cries, 'Thou art just;
Thou wilt not leave me in the dust.' It may
seem a bold thing in a matter of this kind to
appeal to the justice rather than to the mercy
of God. It is worse than bold if God be not
our Father. But if God be our Father, His
mercy and His justice are one. The yearning
of a human soul becomes itself a claim. The
aspiration of a human heart becomes itself a
right. The cry of a human spirit becomes it-
self a call for the fulfilment of a promise.

Philip, then, was justified in his view that
the shortest road to the hope of immortality
is a vision of the Father. But he neutralised
his doctrine by taking a long road to that
vision. Where Philip erred was in the belief
that a vision of the Father was best reached
by getting away from human contact or, to
repeat the old metaphor, by quitting the stage
for the greenroom. To him the Divine was
something apart from the human; to behold it
he must withdraw himself. He must retire

1 66 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

from the footlights, from the drapery, from the
actors in the scenes of time. He must get be-
hind the scenes. He must seek a moment of
ecstasy in which he will be raised above the
things of the day and of the dust and ushered
into that august Presence which transcends the
works of man.

And this is the view of Philip which our Lord
combats here. He tells him that the knowl-
edge of the Father is not reached in the way
he supposes. He tells him that the love of
the Father is learned on the stage of time —
not behind it, * He that has seen Me hath
seen the Father, and how sayest thou then,
Show us the Father ! ' He tells him that it is
not where human work is transcended that we
get our deepest glimpse of the Divine; it is
precisely where human work is richest — * The
Father that dwelleth in Me doeth the works.'
Would Philip believe in Divine fatherhood, let
him study human brotherhood. Let him con-
sider the spirit of Christ as it exists in the
world. Let him ponder how through that
spirit man has sacrificed for man, how love has

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 167

dared many a cross, how sympathy has shared
many a sorrow, how pity has dried many a tear,
how compassion has healed many a pain, how
benevolence has assuaged many a hunger. Let
him ponder these things, and he will reach a
clearer vision of the fatherhood of God than if
he stood in the forest primeval in the solitary
presence of the Divine.

Such is the burden of Christ's message to
Philip. I have been struck with the fact that
before it became a formal message it was made
a practical training. We read that — some
three years earlier — immediately after Jesus had
called him to join the league of pity, he brought
another man to the league — ' Philip findeth
Nathanael. ' Why does he rush at once to
secure a companion in his own calling.-' We
do not wonder when we are told that Andrew,
after his own call, finds his brother Simon.
These were brothers, and it was inevitable
that either adversely or favourably the act of
the one should influence the other. But Philip
and Nathanael were not brothers; to find
the latter required a seeking on the part of the

1 68 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

former. Why does Philip hasten to implant
m the heart of another a conviction at which
he himself had only arrived yesterday? I be-
lieve the answer to be that he was told to do
so. I think that the moment he gave his al-
legiance to Jesus, Jesus said to him, ' Find Me
an additional man.' And I believe the reason
of this request was not the helping of Jesus but
the helping of Philip. Jesus might have called
Nathanael by a telepathic message; but Philip
would thereby have lost an element in his edu-
cation. If Philip was the man we have found
him to be — with a tendency to underrate the
practical, there could be no better introduction
to his Christian training than to give him prac-
tical work. He ought not to be allowed to go
home and dream of twelve legions of angels.
Let him look to the help of his brother-man, nay,
let him make an effort to initiate that help.
Let him use his human judgment. Let him
find a man himself — one whom he believes to
be fitted for the great work of inaugurating
the future kingdom. All education should be
directed to the weak point of a nature. If

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 169

you see one like Paul whose life has been en-
tirely occupied with the practical, send him into
Arabia — seclude him for a time that he may
meditate. If, on the other hand, you see one
like Philip disposed to look for God in things
behind the scenes, send him into the practical
world — let him find an additional man.

As a further contribution to this training,
Philip, in the latest days of Christ's ministry, is
made the instrument of a wondrously practical
work quite on the lines of his search for Nathan-
ael. If you or I were suddenly asked the ques-
tion. Which of the Christian disciples brought
the earliest help to the Gentiles ? I do not think
we should immediately hit the answer. We
should probably say ' Paul ' or ' Peter ' or ' Ste-
phen.' But in truth there was one before any
of these— it was Philip. After our Lord Him-
self, the first who spoke a word to the Gentiles
was this obscure man of Bethsaida. Before
Peter had called Cornelius, before Stephen had
lifted his voice, before Paul had raised his ban-
ner, Philip had brought a Gentile band into
the presence of Jesus. True, they were the

I70 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

descendants of Jews ; ' but they had been bom
in a foreign land, bred in a foreign culture,
trained in foreign ideas. They had become
Greeks in nationality, Greeks in education,
Greeks in taste, Greeks in manner. But they
had heard of the fame of Jesus, and they longed
to see Him. Their pride in the old ancestry
was not dead. They were glad that where their
fathers' homes had been, there had risen a
great light. How were they to gaze upon that
light ? The Jews would now despise them, count
them aliens. Yet they would try. The Pass-
over Feast was coming on; they would go up
to Jerusalem; perchance some one might show
them the new star. They come; and they are
gladdened by a discovery. Among the names
of Christ's inner circle they hear of one which
is Greek — Philip. They are attracted by the
kindred sound. Is not this the man to lead
them to Jesus — a man with an affinity of name
to the names of their own countrymen ! And

' I have taken this view instead of the prevalent one
which makes these men pure Greeks ; I do not think the
latter view sufficiently accounts for their interest in Jesus.

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 171

so Philip becomes the medium of the first Gen-
tile wave. To him is it granted to open the
door. To him is committed the privilege of un-
veiling the Christ to the eyes of other lands.
To him, above all, is assigned the glory of per-
forming the great marriage between the East
and the West, and of joining the hand of Europe
to the hand of Asia !

Was there any fruit of this union ? Did the
meeting of Philip with the Greeks produce any
effect on history.'' Let me hazard a suggestion
— a suggestion which, so far as I know, has not
been made before, but which has long been
graven on my own mind. Some years after-
wards there appeared in the Christian world a
young man of great power and promise. He
was a Greek of Jewish descent, and his name
was also Philip. Like the elder Philip, he too
was commanded to work in a desert — a place
where to all appearance no bread could be
found. Yet it was found — in rich superabun-
dance. In that desert he met only one man
whom he could make a Christian; but that
one man was the centre of a whole kingdom —

172 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the bread was multiplied indefinitely. Now, I
have always believed that this second Philip
received his name at baptism in honour of the
first. I have always believed that he was one
of those Greeks who came to the Christian apos-
tle with the intention of seeing the Lord. I
have figured to myself the result of that vision.
I have seen this youth baptised into the new
faith, and in the strength of gratitude taking
the name of his patron. I have seen him go
forth fired with the enthusiasm of spreading that
faith among his countrymen. I have seen him,
after the death of Stephen, emerge as the cham-
pion of these countrymen and claim their rights
in the Christian community. Then I have
seen his sympathies widen — go beyond Greece,
pass into Samaria, travel into Ethiopia, move
wherever the spirit prompted him. If the life
of such a man was the fruit of the visit to the
apostle Philip, the ministry of that apostle was
abundantly blessed.

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 173

T ORD, often, like Philip, I have been under-
■'— ' rating my surroundings. I have been
complaining of my prosaic sphere; I have been
saying, * Whence shall I find bread in this wil-
derness to feed the multitude of men ! ' I
have been looking for aid to an opening in the
heavens — to the descent of pov/ers supernal.
It never occurred to me that one loaf of bread
could be multiplied into a million. It never en-
tered into my mind that one man could be an
army, one life a kingdom, one soul a generation.
But Thou hast taught me, O my Father. Thou
hast shown me the triumph of my trifles, the
majesty of my rejected moments. The hour
over which I wept is waving with banners. The
book over which I slept is surging with songs.
The fence over which I leapt is laden with pearls.
My fancied weed has become a flower; my im-
agined prison has become a bower; my sup-
posed weakness has become a tower. Evermore
let me reverence the prosaic things! Ever-
more let me uncover my head to the place that
seems a desert! Let me walk with solemnity
beside the rill ! — it may be a river one day. Let

174 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

me tread with awe the village street! — it may
be a city one day. Let me stand with venera-
tion before the squalid child! — he may be a
Shakespeare one day. Once, with proud foot I
passed a hovel by; I was in search of great
events, and I lingered not. And lo! I had
passed the great event of Thy world — the babe
whose swaddling bands were to enfold all na-
tions ! The gold and the frankincense and the
myrrh were there, and the motherhood that
taught Thy fatherhood, and the wisdom that had
found a new worship, and the star that had lit
a new hope ! When I am tempted to despise the
desert, let me remember, O Lord, the majesty
of the manger!

CHAPTER IX

MATTHEW THE EXALTED

There is nothing more striking in the Chris-
tian Gallery than the variety in its modes of
redemption. Christ produces a revolution in
every soul with which He comes into contact;
and yet in no two cases is the revolution pre-
cisely the same. Human weakness is as varied
in iti forms as human virtue ; therefore the cure
of human weakness must be also varied. In
the figures which have already passed before us
we must have been struck beyond everything
with the absence of uniformity in their disease
and its treatment. We have not found any two
of them alike in the symptoms which needed to
be healed. There is no analogy between the
original defect of John the Baptist and the orig-
inal defect of John the Evangelist ; the one is

the narrowness of personal zeal, the other the
175

176 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

narrowness of personal pride. There is no re-
semblance between the imperfect views of Na-
thanael and the imperfect views of Nicodemus;
the former come from rustic simplicity, the
latter from scholarly culture. There is no par-
allel between the cloud in the mind of Peter and
the cloud in the mind of Thomas ; the one comes
from want of courage, the other purely from
want of hope.

I am now approaching a figure of the group
whose prominent feature is just the fact of his
redemption — Matthew the Publican. Our first
impression is that we must expect to find this
man without any special weakness, but encrust-
ed with a mass of sin all over. We can put
our hand upon the error which signalised the
Baptist. We can point to the fault which dis-
tinguished the evangelist John. We can indi-
cate the weakness which marred the progress of
Peter. We can tell the besetting frailties which
lent struggle to the lives of Philip and Thomas
and Nicodemus. But if we were asked to spe-
cialise the fault of Matthew, I think v/e should
say, ' You might as well ask me to special-

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 177

ise the fault of a quagmire ! ' We look on this
man, not as one with a besetting sin, but as
one who had sin for his very essence. I went
into a country church one day and heard the
character of Matthew expounded as if his bad-
ness were a truism. He was everything that
was wicked — an extortioner, a cheat, a defraud-
er, a liar, a man dishonest in thought and word
and deed. Here was a character with no spe-
cially besetting sin. You could not label him.
You could label Peter or John or Thomas, but
not Matthew; he was a quagmire — he was pol-
lution all round.

Now, let me say at once that this is not the
view I have taken of the matter. I think Mat-
thew was a man with a special defect — not with
pollution all over. The latter supposition is neg-
atived partly by the fact of his call and mainly
by his immediate response to that call. It was
a call, not to mere mercy, but to the height
of apostolic dignity. I could understand a man
like Judas becoming depraved subsequent to or-
dination ; but I cannot understand a man called
to ordination at a time when he was already

178 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

depraved. And if I am reminded how the
heart can conceal its vices, still less can I under-
stand how a heart with such vices could care
for such ordination — how a man of extortion,
of fraud, of covetousness, of avarice without
principle and greed without justice, could in
a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, give up
his entire world and join the ranks of poverty.
I have already said, in speaking of the transi-
tion into a new life, that the actual plunge is
ever sudden; but I have also said that there
is a long walk to the river-side. A conversion
like this would have been to Matthew an expe-
rience of the plunge without the walk.

And what is the evidence on which rests the
unqualified badness of Matthew.'' It is the ob-
loquy attached to his profession. The preacher
says : * This man was a publican — one of those
who farmed the taxes for the Roman govern-
ment. Those who farmed the taxes were se-
lected from the lowest social strata. They were
originally poor, hungry, ill-clad. The occupa-
tion, therefore, to which they were chosen placed
them in a sphere of strong temptation. They

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 179

had every inducement to be unjust, to overreach,
to exact, to falsify, to become the instruments
for bribery and corruption. And Matthew was
one of these. He was a member of this fra-
ternity, immersed in a trade which held out a
prospect of gain to the unscrupulous and of-
fered a life of comfort to him who did not resist
the tempter. Surely a record like his could
have only one issue ! '

The logic of this is deplorable. It is equiva-
lent to saying that, if a man belongs to a call-
ing which involves a particular temptation, he
must be held guilty of having yielded to that
temptation. Consider for a moment. There
is no profession known to me which does not in-
volve its own special temptation. The clerical
calling tempts to narrowness, the medical to
materialism, the legal to the loss of sentiment,
the literary to a spirit of selfishness. Yet one
of the broadest men I ever knew was a sin-
cerely orthodox cleric ; one of the most assured
Christians I ever knew was a leading physician;
one of the most kindly sympathisers I ever
knew was a legal practitioner; one of the most

i8o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

sacrificing lives I ever knew was a highly suc-
cessful writer. We must protest against attrib-
uting to any man the special sin of his calling.
It is unfair ; it is negatived by a thousand facts.
There was nothing in Roman tax - gathering
which made vice in that calling a necessary thing.
In point of fact, the vice came from the outside.
The master-puhlicsins were men of rank and
credit ; but they put their work into the hands
of subordinates who were often taken from the
slums. The vices these exhibited in their pro-
fession were brought with them tnto their pro-
fession ; they came from the previous corruptions
of human nature, and no trade is chargeable
with them. We cannot morally label Matthew
by calling him ' Matthew the Publican. '

The truth is, the obloquy with which Matthew
was regarded by his countrymen did not pro-
ceed from the fear that he was a bad man,
but from the certainty that he was a bad Jew.
The most galling fact to the Israel of later days
was the fact that she paid tribute to another
land. Ideally, she claimed to be the mistress of
the world — the nation into whose treasury all

MATTHEW THE EXALTED i8i

tribute should flow. To the proud eye of the
prophet Isaiah, she had been the mountain es-
tabUshed on the top of the hills, and toward her
height the other lands had looked, wondering.
That such a nation should pay taxes to a for-
eign people, a Gentile people, was an awful
thought. It was a pain worse than laceration,
more cruel than a blow. But there was the pos-
sibility of a pain more poignant still. It was
bad enough that the tribute of homage from Is-
rael should be collected by a Roman. But
what if the man who gathered it should be a
son of Israel herself — a scion of her race, an
heir to her promises, a nursling of her prophets !
What if the man who taunted her with her mis-
fortunes should be one born within her pale,
bred within her precincts, sheltered within her
privileges — one from whom was due the venera-
tion for her sanctuary and the reverence for her
God ! Would it not seem to her as if all her
calamities had culminated and as if the cloud of
her sorrow had deepened into starless night !

Now, this often happened; and it happened
in the case of Matthew. Here was a Jew who

i82 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

had lost the last shred of patriotism ! He had
forgotten the traditions of his ancestors — for-
gotten the parted waters of the Red Sea, and
the burning bush, and the pillars of cloud and
fire! He had become oblivious that he was the
son of a race which claimed the ultimate do-
minion over all the world ! He had not only ac-
cepted without a blush the domination by the
stranger; he had taken part with the stranger
in his domination ! He had attached himself to
the enemies of his country — had become a col-
lector of their tribute from his own conquered
land ! This was hard upon that land. The man
who acted thus was bound to be execrated by
his race. He was execrated on that ground
alone. No amount of personal vices would in
the eyes of his countrymen have added to the
enormity of his sin, and no amount of personal
virtues would in the slightest degree have mini-
mised that sin. His deed was itself to them
the acme of all iniquity, from which nothing
could detract and which nothing could intensify.
The blackness of Matthew's character in the
eyes of the Jew was the fact of his apostasy.

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 183

But the question is, What is its blackness in
our eyes ? We sympathise much with the feel-
ing of his countrymen ; yet, after all, that is a
local matter, and the question should be viewed
apart from local considerations. We must ask
ourselves, Where lay the precise fault in this ab-
sence of patriotism? When we have answered
that, we shall have found the real weak point
in the character of Matthew — the point which
made him an object for Christ's compassion, and
the point which suggested Christ's mode of cure.

It is quite evident to me that a defect in
Jewish patriotism always proceeded from one
definite defect in character— a want of self-re-
spect. I do not say that every man who has
lost his patriotism has lost his self-respect, for
every man's country is not meant to be identical
with his own soul. But the Jew's was. I have
already said in speaking of Nicodemus that in the
Jewish community the nation and the individual
were one. A man's loves and fears were for
his native land. His land was a part of himself
— the largest part ; its preservation was his
main motive for living. A Jew could only for-

i84 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

get his country by ceasing to care for himself —
by losing self-respect. All in him that was per-
sonal was national — his feasts, his sacrifices, his
family, his hopes, his sins, his sorrows, his very
aspirings after immortality. To destroy within
his heart the care for his country was to destroy
within his heart all care for anything.

Here, then, is the real source of Matthew's
want of patriotism ; it is want of self-respect.
His defect is the extreme opposite of that which
we found in the original nature of the evangel-
ist John. John, as I have indicated, had too
big a mirror; Matthew had no mirror at all.
John saw his youthful figure at an exaggerated
height; Matthew beheld no reflection of him-
self whatever. John required to have his glass
smashed; Matthew needed to have a glass con-
structed. John had too much pride; Mat-
thew had too little. It would be difficult to
say which of the extremes is the more fraught
with danger — the excess of self-respect or the
absence of self-respect. Too steadfast a gaze
at self has slain its thousands; but it may be
doubted if iho. failure to see one's self has not

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 185

produced as many victims. Pride is a positive
state; want of self-respect is a negative state.
But I think the mind suffers as much by its
moments of negation as by its moments of posi-
tive evil. The heart filled with personal vanity
is not safe; but the heart unfilled by any per-
sonal interest is no safer. There are in my
opinion as many young men led astray by the
want of a looking-glass as by the over-prominence
of a looking-glass. It is a dangerous thing
when we express a real truth by the words, ' I
do not care.'

I have said that the want of self-respect is in
itself a negative quality. I wish to emphasise
the point, because it is often mistaken for things
from which it is quite different. For instance,
we associate this quality with meanness. Yet
the mean man is never without his mirror.
He errs, not by want of self-respect, but by a
low ideal of what in the self is respectable.
He sees himself in the glass adorned in purple
and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day.
He says, ' This is "to live," this is "to prosper,"
this is "to be respected"!' Then follows the

i86 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

conclusion, ' This is the only thing worth striv-
ing for; let me work for nothing else, aim at
nothing else, dream of nothing else ; let me seek
wealth at all times and by all means ! '

Will any man say that such a soul is in want
of a mirror! Does its meanness not come from
its mirror — from the sight of a false ideal of
what it is to be great ! Such a soul has reached
its dishonesties, its frauds, its extortions, its
unjust dealings, by nothing else than a mode of
self-contemplation — by gazing into a glass which
paints the little as if it were the grand. If Mat-
thew had lost his Jewish patriotism, he was not
that man, for he who lost his Jewish patriot-
ism lost his glass too, and had no longer an
aim in life either high or low.

Again. We often associate want of self-
respect with abjectness. By abjectness I mean
one's feeling that he is a poor creature — that he
is a worm and no man. And yet this condition
is also incompatible with the loss of the mirror.
It is itself a looking into the glass. It is by the
reflection in that glass I come to the conclu-
sion that I am a poor creature. The word

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 187

'self-respect' literally means self - regarding,
self-beholding. In the case of the crushed or
abject man, he beholds himself as an object
of compassion, as a thing worthy to win pity,
as one who deserved a better fate. The man
who has lost his mirror cannot be an abject man.
That would be a contradiction in terms; he
would have no shadow of himself to look at,
and so could not grieve over it. Matthew was
not an abject man. Not even after his call does
he sit in sackcloth and ashes over the mem-
ory of his past. On the contrary, he makes a
great feast in his own house and invites his
fellow-publicans. The act could never have
proceeded from one beholding his natural face
in a glass.

What, then, is the bane of having no mirror .!*
It is being down without knowing it. It is the
living by the day — without a plan, without a
principle. It is a vegetable life. It is the ab-
sence of all desire to look forward to anything,
to look backward to anything, to look upward
to anything. It is the enclosure within the mo-
ment. It is the experience of a state of mind

1 88 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

which may not always be doing harm, but which
is never doing good. It may keep the precepts,
' Thou shalt not kill, ' * Thou shalt not steal, '
* Thou shalt not bear false witness ' ; but it will
have no impulse to seek and to save, no bosom
on which to lay the burdens of humanity.

What, therefore, did Matthew need.-' It was
a mirror — a sense of exaltation. It is not enough
that a man has no depression ; he must have ex-
altation. I will go further. I think that in spir-
itual matters the valley is nearer to the moun-
tain than is the plain. I believe that a life
of conscious depression will sooner reach the
sense of a height than a life of commonplace
prosaic routine which looks neither up nor
down. Matthew was a man of the plain. He
was not, like Thomas, a man of the valley.
Thomas had depression, in other words, he
saw himself in a glass and pitied himself. But
Matthew had no depression. His was not a
valley experience. He lived on level ground
without depths or heights. He never saw him-
self—\iQ. had no mirror. To have a mirror you
must be either on the mountain or in the vale;

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 189

Matthew's was as yet a plant's life. Jesus
said, ' I must give this man a sight of his high-
er self, of his possible self. ' He felt that what
Matthew needed was a stimulus — something to
lift him up. There were those to whom He
came with a cross — those who, like the woman of
Samaria, had to be wakened to their own shame.
But to this man He came with a crown. What
Matthew needed to feel was his own importance.
Let him be lifted up to the mountain — sud-
denly, drastically, unexpectedly. Let him get a
sight of his future self, what he is coming to,
what is coming to him. Let him see himself as
God meant him to be — a man of dignity, a man
of power. That was what Jesus did to Matthew
the Publican. He came without warning, with-
out preparation. He stood before him at the
receipt of custom. He ignored all the crowd
assembled there. He fixed His gaze upon him
alone — apart from his fellows, apart from the
yielders of his tribute. He addressed him with-
out preamble, without title — as if He were sum-
ming up a long process of reasoning; He said,
bluntly and boldly, ' Follow Me ! '

I90 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

For the first time in his life Matthew found
himself a man — a man of importance, a man
of mark. He awoke to find himself famous
— an object of interest, a centre of attraction.
He had the novel experience of standing with
a mirror in his hand looking at his own person.
So novel was the experience that it carried
him away. Surprise overmastered him. That
Christ should choose him — the cipher, the no-
body, the man who had forfeited his right to
call himself a son of Israel — this was a start-
ling thing. That he, who had never been dig-
nified enough to care what the world might
think of him, should be suddenly called to stand
before the world as an example, was a thought
almost weird in its strangeness. The newness
of the sensation quite conquered him. ' Follow
Me ! ' said the voice ; and he lingered not a
moment. He did not wait for enlightenment;
he had got the one light whose absence had made
him ignoble — self-respect. His exodus came
with his exaltation. The instant he said, ' I am
somebody,' he rose and left Egypt. He went
out from the receipt of custom and passed over

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 191

into the Christian land. Like Israel, he made
his ' passover ' a subject of congratulation.
Our last glimpse of him but one is at that ban-
quet which he spread as a farewell to the old
and an inauguration of the new.

But there is one glimpse more, and it is to
me the most suggestive of all. The next time
we see Matthew he has a pen in his hand; he
is writing a gospel. Volumes have been multi-
plied on that gospel. Discussions have been
reiterated as to the source of its materials and
the origin of its information. Commentaries
have been accumulated exhausting every possi-
ble meaning of his words and embodying every
thought involved in his teaching. It would seem
as if the subject were at last threadbare. And
yet there is one fact about this gospel which,
so far as I know, has never been spoken — its
connection with Matthew's call. We are in the
habit of regarding it as a purely impersonal
piece of writing — without any note of autobi-
ography or incidental emergence of the author's
memory. The truth, as I believe, is that the
very central idea of the book is itself a note

192 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

of autobiography. What is that central idea?
It is the spirit of patriotism. The Gospel of
Matthew is the most patriotic of all the gospels.
His Christ is the Christ of Israel — born king:
of the Jews. All that He does is made to echo
the glories of Matthew's native land. Every-
thing about Him is the flowering of Israel's
prophecies, is done 'that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken.' The glory of Messiah is
that He has glorified this favoured nation —
proved that she was right in her aspirations
and in her dreams. This patriotism of the First
Gospel is of course known to every schoolboy.
But have we considered what it means in re-
lation to the character of Matthew himself.!*
Nothing less than a moral revolution. This
man's defect had all along been a want of pa-
triotism. He had ignored the claims of his coun-
try, he had disregarded the ties of his people.
But, when for the last time our eyes rest upon
him, he is a man transformed. He has become
rich just where he was poor, overflowing just
where he was deficient. He is a patriot of the
patriots. His country which yesterday was noth-

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 193

ing is to-day all in all. He has put on the arms
of his race — is prepared to fight for it, to die for
it. He has declared himself a son of Israel
and is ready to lavish on her all his praise.

And I think there is something very grand
and very beautiful in this final glimpse which
we receive of Matthew the Publican. It is our
glimpse of one who has got back his self-respect
and longs to atone. He has been for years de-
nuding his country of her due. He now says, ' I
must make it up to her at last, though late; I
must compensate her for the gifts I have with-
held ! ' I say there is something fine in this
man's light at evening-time. Though it is
evening, though the day is far spent, though
many golden hours and golden opportunities
have been lost, he will not despair of undoing
his past. He will concentrate into the evening
sky what he should have spread over the whole
day. He will bestow his gifts in double meas-
ure. He will assign to his native land a glory
which he could not, even if he would, have given
in his morning hours. For now the Christ

has come — Judah has received her latest flower.
13

194 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

He can tell her of that flower, can tell her of
her share in its production. He can tell her
how she has been justified, glorified, raised out
of the category of vain dreamers and proclaimed
to be a nation which has a star in heaven. That
is why Matthew in the evening writes his life
of Jesus.

LORD, teach me the dignity of my own soul !
Many have warned me of the pride of
life; and it is evil and harmful indeed. But I
think an equal danger has come from my hours
of recklessness. I think I have never been fur-
ther from Thee than in the moment when I have
said, * Life is a worthless thing ! ' Whenever I
go out without my mirror I am very near
temptation. When I say in my heart, ' It will
be all the same a hundred years hence,' I am
perilously close to the precipice. In that mo-
ment I have broken my mirror — have lost sight
of life's magnitude, life's value. When I lose
the sight of life's value, I begin to value lower
things; when I break my mirror, I look into
the muddy pool. My Father, I think it is for

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 195

idle hearts that Satan finds mischief. Save
me from an idle heart — a heart that has nothing
to love! If my heart has its mirror, yea, even
its mirror of care, I shall not touch the miry
clay. All idleness is the heart's idleness — the
heart ceasing to vibrate. Though my hands
be folded, though my lips be silent, though
my feet be resting, though my fancy be repos-
ing, yet, if my heart be carrying its mirror, I
am not idle. Keep that glass undimmed, O my
Father! Whatever else I lose, let me never
lose my love — the sense that life holds some-
thing dear ! Let no cloud curtain it ! Let no
storm sink it ! Let no waters wash it away !
May every beam brighten it ! May every hope
hallow it ! May every fear freshen it ! May
every dream deepen it ! May every cross crown
it ! May every rock rivet it ! May every strug-
gle strengthen it ! May every providence purify
it! May it be my star in night, my song in
stillness, my flower in winter, my rainbow in
tears, my help in sorrow, my home in exile, my
youth in autumn, my island in the sea! Never
let my heart drop the mirror of its glory !

CHAPTER X

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK

The name of Zaccheus occupies only a few
verses of St. Luke's Gospel. It does not occur
in any other Gospel, and throughout the Scrip-
tures it is never mentioned again. But a man's
place in the Gallery is by no means determined
by his prominence in the Record. What decides
a man's place in the Gallery is his uniqueness.
Is there anything in his face or figure which sep-
arates him from all the surrounding portraits.-'
If there is, then, however seldom he may be al-
luded to, he is entitled to a prominent position
in the Scripture Gallery; if there is not, then,
however frequent be the recurrence of his name,
he has no right to a distinctive place. The
question is. Has Zaccheus anything new to say
—anything that has not been said by Peter

or John or Philip or Thomas or Nathanael .-* Is
iq6

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 197

the phase of Christianity which he expresses
different from the phases which have been pre-
viously expressed? Does he stand for a class
which has not been already accounted for ; does
he represent a section of mankind who have as
yet received no spokesman? Then is he am-
ply entitled to occupy a front ground in that
great collection of portraits which has conveyed
to all times the separate phases of the Christian
life.

And I say that Zaccheus is such a man. He
flashes out a new shade of colour in the Great
Gallery. He is not exactly like any of his pred-
ecessors. The nearest approach to him is Mat-
thew— both were publicans. Yet, unhke Mat-
thew, Zaccheus was not an object of personal
recrimination to his countrymen. He was not,
as Matthew was, a subordinate who collected
the taxes. He was a mas Ur-puhlican — a rich
man living in Jericho who simply estimated the
revenues and reported them to the government.
The fruits of his conversion no doubt resembled
those brought forth by Matthew, and this is
easily explained by the identity of their pro-

198 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

fessions. But the men originally were very dif-
ferent, Matthew was a man with no interest
in life; Zaccheus is essentially the reverse — a
man of curiosity. Matthew had slow pulses;
the heart of Zaccheus beat rapidly. Matthew
needed to be called; Zaccheus took the initia-
tive. Matthew required stirring up; Zaccheus
would run a race or climb a tree in the eager-
ness to secure his object.

If I were asked to state in a sentence what
Zaccheus represents, I should say he stands for
the average man wakened by conscience. Hith-
erto in this Gallery we have not seen the average
man. We have seen men whose likeness will
be found in every age and clime; but that does
not make one an average man. Peculiarities
may be reproduced in every age and clime; but
they will not be reproduced over the whole mass.
Peter is not an average man; he is the speci-
men of a type of mind. John is not an aver-
age man; he is the representative of a class.
Nathanael and Nicodemus and Thomas and
Philip are not average men ; they stand for par-
ticular phases of human nature. But Zaccheus

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 199

belongs to the majority. There is nothing
peculiar about him, nothing marked, nothing
uncommon. His special feature is his want of
specialty; it is a feature which we have never
met before, and which in the remaining figures
we shall not meet again. Everything about his
character is middle-sized. Physically, he is of
short stature; but mentally, he is neither short
nor tall. He is neither a paragon of excellence
nor a monster of wickedness. He is not a hero
and he is not a demon. He has many good
points, but they never blaze; he has many bad
points, but they never freeze. He is the average
man. He is as virtuous as his neighbours. He
never transgresses use and wont. He does
nothing wrong in the way of business for which
he cannot quote a precedent. He may overleap
the laws of rectitude; but he would be miser-
able to be told that he had violated the mer-
cantile standard of those around him. He lives
up to his own measurement; but he measures
himself by the mass.

Such is my reading of the original character
of Zaccheus. He was a man who was always

200 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

standing before a judgment -throne to give
an account of what he had done ; but it was not
the judgment-throne of Christ. It was the
throne of public opinion before which he stood
— the standard of those within his immedi-
ate environment. When he transgressed that
tribunal, his conscience troubled him; but the
tribunal itself was a very inferior one — his con-
science ought to have demanded more. What
he needed was to have his conscience placed
at the bar of a higher throne of judgment. He
required to see a loftier ideal, to feel the pres-
ence of a more exacting law. Our first impres-
sion is that a man of such a comparatively cor-
rect life is favourable soil for the planting of
Christian seed. It appears easier to convert
him than one who is down in the depths. But
I think this impression is erroneous. There
is none so difficult to move upward as the aver-
age man — none whom it is so hard to quicken
into a Christian conscience. And the reason
is that the man has a conscience already of a
very keen though very inferior stamp. The
tribunal of public opinion blunts him to every

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 201

other tribunal. He is lulled into complacency.
The judgment-throne is low-set, but it is the
highest he has known, and it has been his stan-
dard through life. He has always reverenced
the average — the golden mean. Christianity
makes its appeal to something abnormal — to
those who feel as if they were below the aver-
age, as if they were the chief of sinners, as if
they could only beat upon their breast and cry,
' Unclean ! ' The man who lives in Jericho and
is content with the consciousness that he is
up to the average life of Jericho has a natural
disqualification for meetmg Christ — the dis-
qualification of those who think they have al-
ready attained.

What enabled Zaccheus to surmount this
natural barrier? Strange to say, it was the
fact that his religious deficiency was counter-
balanced by a purely secular impulse — the spirit
of curiosity. The picture as delineated in
the Gallery is graphic. Jesus is coming to
Jericho, and Jericho is on fire with expectation.
His fame has gone before Him. Crowds have
gathered in the streets to await His arrival — anx-

202 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

ious inquirers about the health of body or
soul. Zaccheus is anxious neither about body
nor soul ; but he is eager to see. If he has any
concern, it is about his physical limitations.
How shall a small man like him be able to pro-
cure a sight of Jesus with such a dense pha-
lanx in front of him ! An idea strikes him. He
feels sure that Jesus will not address the people
while they are in the streets — He will advance
into the open and let the multitude follow
Him. Little Zaccheus will get ahead of them.
He will run before into the woodlands and climb
up to the branch of a tree, where his small stat-
ure will be compensated by artificial height and
he will see over the heads of taller men.

Now, I venture to say that in all the Gospel
narrative this is a unique approach to the per-
son of Christ. All the others were either an-
swers to His own invitation or advances of the
sufferer impelled by human pain. Here is a
man who has not been called and who has not
been afflicted. He has neither been summoned
from the receipt of custom like Matthew nor
driven by the burden of sorrow like Jairus.

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 203

He has no ailment about him, no depression
about him. He is alive with the spirit of youth,
and he is brought by an impulse which is the
very index of the youthful spirit — curiosity.
Unique as it is in the Gospel, it is ever the ap-
proach of the average man towards every great
and good thing. It is the child's attraction
to school, the boy's attraction to knowledge,
the youth's attraction to travel, the man's
attraction to nature. Announce a descriptive
lecture on Palestine illustrated by the magic-
lantern, and the young people will come in
crowds. They will not be drawn by the prom-
ised description nor even by the promised illus-
tration of it — an interest in Palestine requires
mental development. They will be attracted
by the magic - lantern itself ; the scenes de-
picted will be interesting not as scenes of Pal-
estine, but as feats of pictorial transformation.
Yet, who does not see that in the future the
memory of these things will become grapes of
Eshcol. What is now a mere source of curios-
ity will come to the mature mind as a hallowed
remembrance clothing in form and colour those

204 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

spots of sacred story which would otherwise
convey nothing but a name.

Zaccheus came to the temple of Christian
truth as the average man is led to all truth —
on the wings of curiosity. His was apparently
the lowest motive in all that crowd. Yet he
is singled out as if he were the hero of the
crowd. To him, sitting in his sycamore tree,
the voice of Jesus cries, * Make haste, Zaccheus,
and come down, for to-day I must abide at
thy house. ' The favour is so great, and the
privilege so well-nigh unparalleled, that we are
tempted to ask if we have not underrated the
spirit of curiosity. Surely the Master must
have seen in this man's motive something more
than we see — something which placed him on
a higher level than those who had come to
be cured of bodily maladies! Can it be that
there is after all a mental element in curiosity
— an element which is indicative of the charac-
ter and predictive of the life ! Let us see.

There is to my mind a great resemblance be-
tween the spirit of curiosity and the spirit of
prayer. Neither of them is in itself either good

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 205

or bad; it depends on what you are curious
about, it depends on what you are in want of.
Prayer may be of three kinds — immoral, non-
moral, or moral. If I ask for vengeance on an
enemy, that is immoral prayer. If I ask for a
chariot and horses, that is non-moral prayer —
it is neither saintly not sinful, but purely sec-
ular. If I ask to be made holy, harmless, and
undefiled, that is moral prayer — it is a sign of
incipient purity. So, also, there are three
kinds of curiosity — immoral, non-moral, and
moral. If I am eager to see a bull-fight, that
is immoral curiosity — it is a wish to view pain.
If I am eager to see a man who professes to
lift heavy weights, that is non-moral curiosity
■ — it is neither good nor bad. If I am eager to
hear a great preacher who has for months been
attracting crowds around him, then, even though
it may be accompanied by no anxiety about my
spiritual state, that is moral curiosity — it indi-
cates a listening attitude in the human soul
and the presence of an open door.

I do not wonder, then, that Zaccheus was
singled out from the multitude. His body was

2o6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

on a sycamore tree and was therefore easily
distinguishable. But his soul was also on a
sycamore tree — raised above the crowd. His
very physical elevation, separating him as it did
from outward contact with Jesus, showed that
he wanted nothing physical — that his motive
was curiosity of mind. I do not wonder that
this approach, prayerless as it was, imper-
sonal as it was, unsolicitous as it was, made an
impression on Jesus beyond the common cries
for bread and sustenance. It was like the
impression made on Him by Thomas. But
Thomas came with low hope — if he asked noth-
ing it was because he expected nothing. Zac-
cheus had the spirit of youth; his hopes were
high; only, they were mental hopes. He
swung up his little body beyond the reach of
temporal help; but he bent the eye of his soul
upon the vision of Jesus. What he wanted to
see was a spiritual glory, and Christ rated the
man according to his desire. He picked him
out from the mass and said, ' I must abide at
thy house to-day. '

I wish here to direct attention to a frequent

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 207

peculiarity in the method of Jesus. When He
is about to confer a favour on any one, He often
begins by asking a favour from hhn. How-
ever dimly Zaccheus is aware of his mental
need, Jesus knows it very well and is prepared
to remedy it. Yet, instead of telling him that
he is a poor creature requiring Divine aid, He
asks aid from him. He says, * I require shelter
to-night; no house will be so convenient for
me as yours ; can you give me room .-' ' We
see the same thing in the case of the woman of
Samaria, where He begins by asking a drink
of water. We see it in the case of Magdalene,
where He allows her service to precede His
cure. We see it in His acceptance of the invi-
tation to abide at Emmaus. We see it in His
receiving of hospitality at many a feast. We
see it in His submission to the outpouring on
His person of the costliest ointment, and in His
willingness to partake of material comforts from
the hands of the women of Galilee.

These facts are not accidental. They are a
part of the deep moral insight of Jesus. What
is the relation which He wishes to establish

2o8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

between Himself and His followers? It is one
of communion. Now, communion cannot be
on one side. It is not possible that such a
relation can exist between any two minds if the
one is active and the other passive. There is
nothing so paralysing as the perpetual receiv-
ing of benefits. Even in a case of forgiveness
the delinquent should be allowed to do some-
thing for his pardoner. If I have offended you,
there is a breach between us; and that breach
is not healed by the mere fact that you forgive
me. Even after the forgiveness, I am still in
the valley and you on the mount. It is not
enough that you descend to me; I must be
allowed to meet you half-way. Pardon is not
reconciliation. In one sense it is the reverse
of reconciliation, for it emphasises the differ-
ence between your height and my depth. Rec-
onciliation seeks to abolish that difference. It
aims to break inequality, to restore communion.
It cannot restore communion while the sac-
rifice is all on one side. I who am pardoned
must be suffered to do something for you the
pardoner. It is not enough that you bring

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 209

forth the best robe and put it on me; I must
be allowed to give a garment to you. Christ is
coming to pardon Zaccheus; but He does not
want this pardon to leave Zaccheus in the valley.
He desires him to have a memory that he too
was the bestower of a gift, that he was able
to extend a courtesy in return for favours re-
ceived. And so, with a fine touch of graceful-
ness, He makes it appear as if the favour were to
Him. He asks hospitality, shelter, companion-
ship for the day. As He had begged the Sa-
maritan for a draught from the well, He begs
Zaccheus to make Him a guest for the hour;
and in both cases for the same reason — that the
mind, before its vision, may have a sense of in-
dependent dignity.

Jesus, then, became for one day the guest of
Zaccheus ; and at the evening-time there dawned
for him a great light. It was a light which rose
upon his conscience. He stood before a new
judgment-seat ; and there sat on it ' one like
unto a son of man. ' Hitherto, the arbiter of
his conscience had been public opinion. Sud-
denly public opinion became valueless. All the
14

2IO THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

social magnates fled from his throne, and in their
place there stood one solitary figure wielding the
sceptre over his heart and giving the law to his
life. In the morning he had said, ' How will
society regard me ? ' in the evening his question
is, ' What will Jesus say ? ' In the morning he
was comforted by the low standard of a multi-
tude; in the evening he is ruffled by the lofty
standard of One. In the morning he was self-
complacent by viewing the numbers on his
own road; in the evening he is perturbed by
the sight of a single individual on the summit
of a commanding hill.

Yet, there is something startling about this
revival in the conscience of Zaccheus. It is
not exactly what we should expect. We ex-
pect to see an awakened man bow his head and
cry, ' Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner ! ' Zac-
cheus feels himself to be in moral debt; but,
strange to say, it is to man. He has two cries
of remorse; but they are both for the human.
He feels he has done too little good, and he feels
he has done too much bad. He wants to remedy
both — the one by charity and the other by com-

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 211

pensation, ' The half of my goods I give to the
poor, and if I have taken any thing from any
man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. '
We hear the same double cry from the lips of
Matthew ; he makes a feast to express his char-
ity, and he writes a Gospel to redeem his want
of patriotism. But the strange thing is that
these men should not have first wished to put
themselves right with God. When David kills
Uriah, he takes a theological view of the mat-
ter, and cries, in the psalm traditionally attrib-
uted to him, * Against Thee, Thee only, have
I sinned, and done this evil in TJiy sight.'
Why should Zaccheus take a human view of
the matter! Why should he allow the injury
to his fellow-creatures to obscure his sense of
an offended Lawgiver! Why should he look
with dismay on what he has failed to do and
what he has done amiss for humanity when there
is another and a graver subject which should
press upon his thoughts — his violation of the
statutes of heaven, his breaking of the command-
ments of God !

But look deeper. Do you suppose Zaccheus

212 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

thought this ' another subject ' ! Do you think
that when he lamented his shortcomings to-
wards his fellow-men he regarded himself in any
other light than as a transgressor of Divine law !
Remember into what he had been baptised that
day! He had accepted a new definition of God
— had said, ' God is love. ' What did that mean ?
It meant that for him in all time to come the
law of God was broken when the rights of man
were violated. It meant that to outrage the
justice of God was to trample on the heart of
his brothers. It meant that to leave poverty
unassisted, to pass privation unpitied, to turn
aside from the sight of struggle and pain, was to
commit sacrilege against the Divine mercy-seat,
to stain the steps of the altar of sacrifice. It
meant that, if Zaccheus were conscious of an
unpaid debt to man, it was really the con-
sciousness of an unpaid debt to God, and that
the road to atonement with God was through
the rehabilitation of man. That was the new
view which burst upon the soul of this man of
Jericho. It was a view which embodied the
whole doctrine of the coming Calvary. It taught

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 213

that the way to reconciliation with the Father
is to lay down life for the brethren, and that to
atone for past sin is to bear the cross of human-
ity. It was really an annulling of the distinc-
tion between the secular and the sacred. To
the eye of Zaccheus all duties became church
duties. His receipt of custom became a Di-
vine service to be piously performed. The ex-
change took the sanctity of a temple. The
gifts bestowed upon the widow and the orphan
were treasures lent to the Lord. The coin laid
on the lap of poverty was a holy offering to heav-
en. The raising of a life from secular want
and temporal despair was the building of a new
synagogue which one day might be fit for the
habitation of the King of kings.

And this union of the secular and the sacred
within the heart of Zaccheus explains something
which separates his call from most other Gospel
calls — which gives it an aspect more consonant
with modern than with ancient life. When
Christ summoned men to join His standard, the
ooedience to the summons commonly involved
a change of occupation. ' We have left all.

214 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

and followed Thee' is the cry of the disciples.
The fishermen of Galilee were transformed into
fishers of human souls; Peter, Andrew, James,
John, Philip, forsook their nets when they be-
came members of the league of pity. Matthew
himself, whose case is the most analogous to that
of Zaccheus, is called out of his profession; he
leaves the business of tax-gathering when he fol-
lows Jesus. But Zaccheus gets no such com-
mand. The change wrought in him is all within.
He is not told to give up his trade, to abandon
his daily resorts, to quit the exchange and the
market-place. He is not led to think that the
employment he has been pursuing is common or
unclean. Rather does there flash upon him
the knowledge that he has been polluting that
which is holy, staining that which is sacred,
soiling that which is Divine. There breaks
upon him the conviction that to be a good man
he needs not the wings of a dove to fly away
• — that he may stand here and be holy, work
here and be pure, toil amid the perishable things
of time and yet perform the deeds of a saint
of the Most High. I think there is some-

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 215

thing very fine in the fact that, amid the many
Gospel pictures of men leaving the old world
to win the new, there is one which depicts a
human soul in a different attitude — as impreg-
nating with its own purity the things among
which all along it has lived and moved and had
its being.

ABIDE in my house one day, O Son of Man !
A voice has sung in Thy praise, ' I tri-
umph still if Thou abide with me. ' Yet it is
not for the triumph I need Thine abiding; it is
rather for the overshadowing of my too-tri-
umphant self. I am ever triumphant in myself
when Thou art not with me. I am like the
artist that has never seen a picture but his own.
He is very proud of his own, for he has no
artistic conscience to see its blemishes. He will
never be great till he sees its blemishes — till
one of the master-painters come and 'abide'
with him. I too am without conscience till Thy
coming. I cannot see my spots till the sun
rise. It is not my blemishes which drive me to
Thy light; it is Thy light which drives me to

21 6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

my blemishes. Never can I learn the poverty
of my own painting until Thy portrait is hung
upon my wall. Then my true conscience will
be born; then shall I realise my own nothing-
ness. From Thy light shall come my loathing;
from Thy beauty shall come my burden; from
Thy song shall come my sigh. I shall be dissat-
isfied in the dawn. I shall be humbled on the
height. I shall be convicted when I put on the
crown. Rise upon my night that I may know
my night ! Sing in my silence that I may search
my silence! Shine in my heart that I may
hate my heart! Flood me with Thy love that
I may learn my lovelessness ! Touch me with
Thy peace that I may perceive my pain ! Take
me up to the mount, O Lord, take me up to the
mount! for only in Thy pure air shall I find
my foulness, and only in an upper room shall
I discover the depth below. I shall cease to
triumph in myself if Thou shalt * abide with me. '

CHAPTER XI

JAMES THE SOFTENED

All the figures we have been considering have

been men of the spring. What I mean is that

they recognised a power in Christ the moment

He was presented to them. They may have

erred as to where that power lay — Nicodemus

may have seen it too much in the physical,

Thomas too little; but a power of some kind

they all at 07tce recognised. We are coming

now, however, to a figure which reveals an

exception to the rule; it is that of James the

Lord's brother. I would call him distinctively

the man of the autumn. It is not that in point

of time he was late in becoming a Christian — in

years he was young when he joined the cause

of Christ. But he was old in experience. He
217

2i8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

had resisted the Christian influence longer than
any of his apostoHc contemporaries. And the
fact is more remarkable because outwardly he
was more privileged than any of these. He
was a member of Christ's own family — prob-
ably an inmate of His home at Nazareth. He
is called 'the Lord's brother.' What that
means I shall not here discuss. Whether he was
a cousin of Jesus, whether he was the child
of Joseph by a former marriage, or whether he
was a son of Mary subsequent to the birth at
Bethlehem, has been keenly disputed. Person-
ally, I lean to the last view. But the point
here is that, whichever view we take, this man
had outward opportunities of contact with Jesus
such as were not enjoyed by any of his com-
rades. In spite of that, he seems at first to
have been as great an unbeliever as Saul of
Tarsus. There has always been to me a deep
significance in that saying of St. John that the
followers of Christ were * not born of blood. '
He must have had in his mind the fact that
physical consanguinity had been proved in the
case of Jesus to be no advantage to a man —

JAMES THE SOFTENED 219

that one could have family affinity with Him,
live in the same house with Him, sit at the same
board with Him, engage in the same work with
Him, listen to His conversation on the most
familiar topics of every day, and yet be fur-
ther away from Him than a Matthew at the re-
ceipt of custom or a Nicodemus in the midst
of the Sanhedrin.

You will remember also that this slowness
to accept Christianity was not the result of re-
ligious indifference. It would not be too much
to say that it was the result of religious inten-
sity. There never was a young man more nat-
urally devout than James the Lord's brother.
His misfortune was that devoutness was to
him identical with severity. It was essential
to him that religion should be a hard thing, a
painful and laborious thing. That a man should
be raised into the Divine life instantaneously
was for him a contradiction in terms. That
the soul by a single act of faith should soar into
the presence of God was in his view impossible.
He was opposed to revival movements because
they were rapid movements; he thought Je-

220 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

sus was ' beside Himself. ' ' His idea of piety
was to spend whole hours in the wrestling of
prayer; tradition says that his knees had become
hard by the process. God was to him a Goal
whose glory consisted in not being easily won
— this was the belief of his countrymen, the
faith of his fathers. James had by nature a
mind sternly conservative. Paul describes him-
self as one who had learned to be content with
any circumstances he was placed in. James
went further; he had learned to idolise the cir-
cumstances he was placed in. He had hard-
ened himself against change. Even in trans-
formed years he delighted to think of God as
without ' variableness or the least shadow of
turning ' ; originally, he delighted to think of
himself so. He would have no innovation, no
new notions, no revolutions in opinion; relig-
ion was for him something whose form was
fixed once for all.

' So I gather from the comparison of the twenty-first
and thirty-second verses of the third chapter of Mark.
I regard the 'brethren' of the later verse as identical
with the ' friends ' of the former.

JAMES THE SOFTENED 221

So far as I know, this state of mind continued
with James all through the earthly ministry of
Jesus. His obduracy resisted the closest per-
sonal contact with the Master — a contact ex-
tending to the minutiae of the daily life. But
when the visible Christ was withdrawn, when
the shadows of Calvary had fallen and the per-
sonal contact had become a thing of the past, it
was then that the revelation came. Paul records
that revelation in a brief sentence; he says of
the departed Christ, ' He was seen of James. '
I think this vision of the departed Christ was
James's first clear seeing. To my mind there
is a strong analogy between his experience and
the experience of Paul. They belonged to op-
posite schools; yet I think there is a greater
resemblance between Paul and James than be-
tween Paul and Luke, Paul and Silas, or Paul
and Timothy. Both were reared in rigidness.
Both were opposed to Christianity. Both were
men of the autumn — bringing in their sheaves
when the day had begun to decline. Both
recognised Christ's glory only after He had
passed away from earth. Both, after their vis-

222 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

ion, began a new regime and became the lead-
ers of their respective parties. There are no
two men whose lives present so many points of
parallel.

But the one point of difference is in the orig-
inal privilege of James. Paul was not brought
up in the companionship of Jesus; in no per-
sonal sense had he ever known Christ after the
flesh. But James had ; his intercourse had been
of the closest. And in relation to his autumn
experience, this is the difficulty to be accounted
for. Paul recognised Christ whenever he saw
Him ; James saw Him daily without recognis-
ing Him. In this latter case the question is,
Why.'* Why was it expedient for this man that
Christ should go away, why had the night to
come ere he could see Him.-' The man of Tar-
sus had no meeting on the shores of Galilee;
James dwelt within the very walls which shel-
tered the youth of Jesus. Why is it that James
was no nearer than Paul to the earthly recog-
nition of the Son of Man.?

I think you will find that there are two rea.
sons — deeply rooted in human nature and ap-

JAMES THE SOFTENED 223

plicable to all times. The first would sound like
a paradox if it were not verified by experience.
We all accept it as a truism that the great dis-
tance of one being from another is unfavourable
to the revelation of one being to another. But
it is less frequently considered that an ex-
treme opposite case is equally unfavourable. It
is less frequently considered that a very close
proximity of two beings, provided the proximity
has never been interrupted, is just as preju-
dicial to personal knowledge as would be their
existence in separate lands. We are apt to
think that James had a special privilege and
that Paul had not. The truth is that neither
had a privilege. Each had a barrier inter-
posed between him and his Lord ; but they were
opposite barriers — Paul was too far away, James
was too near.

That extreme nearness retards perception is
a matter of daily observation. It is just as true
of our perception of things as of our perception
of persons. One would suppose, for example,
that the habitual dwellers in a scene of rare
beauty would be peculiarly alive to the attrac-

224 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

tions of physical nature. The reverse is the case.
These are of all people the least responsive to
the beautiful. If a stranger comes in among
them, he is transfixed, dazzled, by the splendour
of the scene ; but his enthusiasm rather sur-
prises them. We should suppose, again, that
the constant inhabitants of a city would know
more about that city than those coming into it
from other places. Yet it often happens that
a traveller learns more of a town in a week than
many of its population learn all through their
lives. We should suppose, once more, that
those living continuously in a salubrious atmos-
phere would be free from all illness arising from
atmospheric causes. Yet this is not the case.
The unvaried presence of one climate is like
the unvaried application of a somnolent drug —
it loses its effect. A change of air will event-
ually be found beneficial, even though the new
air be less balmy than the old. The mind must
co-operate with the body to preserve the health
of man. It is not enough that an atmosphere
is genial; I must feel it to be genial. It must
enter into me not only as a draught but as a

JAMES THE SOFTENED 225

joy. And if this joy is to be felt, it must not
be an unvaried possession. It must be inter-
rupted to be known; it must be withdrawn to
be appreciated; it must be supplanted by a
shadow to be valued as a light.

Ascend from things to persons, and you will
find a manifestation of the same principle. It
is not the inmates of one house who are the
best judges of the personality of each other.
Even such an external matter as physical
growth is most easily detected, not by a habit-
ual inhabitant of the same dwelling, but by one
who has returned after many days. In order to
examine my brother-man it is essential that
either he or I should stand back. The nearness
disqualifies for observation. I knew a lady
who had under her charge one who was af-
flicted with a brain affection. She was eager
from time to time that some test should be
applied as to whether the sufferer were men-
tally improving or declining. But she was quite
unable to apply the test herself; the fact of
living constantly together made it impossible

to distinguish between minute shades of men-
15

226 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

tal gradation. What did she do under the cir-
cumstances? She brought the sufferer period-
ically to one who knew both of them, but who
was living in a totally different atmosphere.
His comparative distance placed him at an
advantage; it enabled him to observe those
indications of mental change which were alto-
gether indiscernible by a nearer spectator.

We arrive, then, at the conclusion that, for
acquiring a rapid knowledge of Christian truth,
to be the Lord's brother was a disadvantage.
The physical relationship was itself fitted to
make James a man of the autumn. But I think
there was a second reason why the Christian life
of James was retarded rather than accelerated
by his growing up under the same roof with
Jesus. I allude to the fact that Christianity
seems in the beginning at variance with home
duties. It shares this reproach in common with
all poetry. Christianity is a poetic system. It
professes to lift the heart into a higher and
fairer world. By the man of home duties such
professions are looked upon with disfavour, and,
the more true they are, they are regarded with

JAMES THE SOFTENED 227

more disfavour. To have the heart intent on
a fairer world, whether in the sphere of art or
poetry or Christ, is deemed by the prosaic mind
a disqualification for the things of home. Mar-
tha is always under the impression that Mary is
debarred from helping her by the fact that she
sits at the feet of the Master and listens to the
music of another land !

Now remember, James was by nature a pro-
saic man; even grace did not make him other-
wise. Grace never changes the distinctive sound
of an instrument. It does not make the flute
a violin or the trumpet a harp; what it does
is to improve the quality of each instrument.
James remained to the last a man of prosaic
duty. His role was that of a practical worker,
and he played that role to the end. But at
the beginning he thought that this role was in-
compatible with high thinkings — incompatible
with poetic flights or lofty musings or enraptur-
ing visions. He would have said that the man
who takes the spade in his hand should consider
only the environment of the spade and the
hand — only that soil which he is required to

228 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

fructify, only those sunbeams which he is able
to utilise, only such attributes of the wind and
of the rain as conduce to the growth of the
garden.

But James lived to change his mind. How
do we know that.? Because he has left us a
letter — one of the most remarkable epistles in
the New Testament, embodying the ripest re-
sults of his Christian experience. And the bur-
den of that letter is a discovery which James
has made — a discovery which has softened his
whole nature. He has found that prosaic work,
home duty, humanitarian service, so far from
being at variance with thoughts above the hour,
is itself the legitimate fruit of these thoughts.
' I will show you my faith by my works, ' he
cries — ' I will let you see how much better my
practical duties have been done since I entered
into the secret of Christ's pavilion and gazed
upon the vision of a brighter day.' James has
here struck upon a far-reaching principle — that
the common duties of to-day are best done by
the light of to-morrow. We see it even in domes-
tic service — which is God's simile for His own

JAMES THE SOFTENED 229

service. The domestic servant has to perform
the duty of the hour; but she will do it best if
she has a hope beyond the hour. Has she the
chance of a holiday. Has she the prospect of
promotion. Has she the promise of an in-
creased emolument. Has she news of some dear
one coming home. Then, even though she be
jaded and languid and weary, whatever her prov-
ince may be it will be well fulfilled — the rooms
will be well swept, the silver will be well pol-
ished, the table will be well attended, the meal
will be well prepared. Not one of us can, in mo-
ments of fatigue and lassitude, do our work ade-
quately if we see nothing beyond the hour.

If you look at the letter of James in this
light, I think there will flash upon it a new
meaning and a new radiance. What, for ex-
ample, is the import of that remarkable passage
in the twenty-third verse of the first chapter —
* If any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer,
he is like unto a man beholding his natural
face in a glass ' } 1 paraphrase it thus : * No
man can do practical work by seeing his soiled
face in a glass — by looking exclusively on his

230 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

naturally mean aspect and squalid surroundings.
That will not help you to act; it will depress
you, it will paralyse you. If you want to be
aided in your work, you must gaze into an ideal
mirror — must see yourself, not as you are, but
as you ought to be, as you may be, as you shall
be. You must behold your better self, your
coming self, your Godward self. You must
measure your possibilities, not by viewing the
marred image in the looking-glass of the past,
but by contemplating the glorious form which
is foreshadowed in the mirror of the future.'

This was what James had himself found by
experience. He was doing the same prosaic
work which he had ever done; but he was do-
ing it much better. The reason was not that
his eye was more intently fixed on the hour,
but that he had come to see something beyond
the hour. He had received a promise of pro-
motion. There had opened before his vision
a prospect of green fields. There had sounded
in his ear a strain of far-off music. There had
been wafted to his sense a perfume of sweet
flowers. The vision and the music and the per-

JAMES THE SOFTENED 231

fume had passed into his soul and thence into
his hand. They had given a new energy to his
mmd, and that energy had streamed through
his body. It had made him a better workman, a
better servant, a better organiser. It had given
him more speed, more concentration, more skill.
He had found that the things of the spirit
helped the things of the flesh.

Take another passage from this remarkable
letter, and you will see again how James had
changed his mind about the antagonism between
prosaic work and ecstatic contemplation. The
words to which I allude are these, ' The fervent
prayer of a righteous man is powerful by its
working. ' The idea is that inward trust helps
the outward hand. Let me illustrate what he
means. He himself gives us a definition of
what he understands by religion — * Pure relig-
ion and undefiled before our God and Father
is this, to visit the fatherless and the wid-
ows in their affliction and to keep unspotted
from the world.' Now, as a mere outward act,
this is a most difficult thing to do. If our view
is limited to the earthly horizon, this visiting

232 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

is to us a positive pain. To come into contact
with scenes of misery, of poverty, of destitu-
tion, is a soul-depressing thing if one has no
comfort to bring. Outside of rehgion, one could
only continue such visiting by systematically
hardening his heart. All pessimism hardens;
despair is ever benumbing. And because it
is benumbing, it is unfavourable to work. It
may visit afflicted widows and orphans, but it
will be as one visits the tombstones — with the
conviction that nothing can be done. This was
what James felt in the days when his heart
was unsoftened. He found that he could only
preach resignation, submission, sullen silence
— that he could not lift by one hair-breadth the
stone from the sepulchre door. But when as a
Christian he began to pray, his heart was soft-
ened with hope. When there came to him an
inward trust that these children of affliction were
already folded in the arms of a heavenly Father
who would by no means let them go until He
had blessed them, then it was that James felt
the impulse to action. As the ice of despair
melted, the river of life began to show its pos-

JAMES THE SOFTENED 233

sibilities. As a gleam appeared in the sky, a
new energy came to the arm. He had heart to
toil for these people, spirit to work for them,
nerve to plan for them; the fervent trust had
inspired effectual service. He felt what every
sick-nurse feels — that hope is a dynamic power,
that the skill of the hand is aided by the light
in the heart, and that the crushing labour of to-
day is shared and alleviated by the strength
received from to-morrow.

James, then, through the softening contact
of Christianity, is conscious of an increased power
of work. But according to this singular letter,
there is another thing he is conscious of — an
increased power of toleration. He says, * The
wisdom that is from above is first pure, then
peaceable, gentle and easy to be intreated. '
There was a time when he would have reasoned
in an opposite way. He would have said, * The
wisdom from above is pure, and, because it is
pure, it is uncompromising to all other sys-
tems.' What has effected the change .-• That
the change is effected, is manifest. It is not
only breathed in his letter; it is evinced in

234 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

his life. This man whose spring was so sombre,
so cold, so forbidding, is in his autumn the har-
binger of peace. It is to him that we are in-
debted for the first oil thrown on the waters in
the great controversy between the Gentile and
the Jew. It is to him that we owe the decision
of that peaceful Council at Jerusalem where
a kindly hand was laid upon the contending
parties and a conciliatory message to each healed
their mutual wounds. Nay, it is to him, along
with Peter, that in the last result we attribute
the recognition by the narrow Church in Judea
of the broad apostle Paul.' All this indicates
a softening of the first austerity, an advance in
the spirit of toleration. But whence came this
advance.? Whence proceeded this increased
power of toleration.** From the same source
as his increased power of work — from the spirit
of Christian hope.

For, I have no hesitation in saying that tol-
eration as well as work is facilitated by hope.
I know that the opposite is the common view.
The popular opinion is that intolerance is pro-
' Gal. i. i8 and 19.

JAMES THE SOFTENED 235

portionate to assurance. There are not wanting
those who say that tolerance has advanced side
by side with doubt and that we have become
less rigid as we have become more unbelieving.
I cannot accept this doctrine. I believe intol-
erance to be always the fruit of fear, and its
opposite to be always the fruit of confidence.
Indifference may spring from unbelief ; but indif-
ference has no more to do with toleration than
with bigotry — it is the absence of all feeling.
Toleration, on the other hand, implies a very
profound feeling — a sense that all will be right.
The tolerant man is the man who stands amid
the storm and refuses by violence to suppress
the winds and the waves. He is not afraid
of the winds and the waves. The writer of
the Apocalypse says of the Heavenly City,
' The gates of it shall not be shut at all by
day, for there shall be no night there.' It is
so with every confident human heart; night -
lessness produces liberality. The heart which
sees no shadow throws open its gates to all opin-
ions. It fears not to give an entrance to senti-
ments not its own. Its breadth comes from its

236 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

clearness, not from its cloud. Abiding faith
makes abiding charity. Not from doubt, not
from uncertainty, does toleration flow. It
comes from a sight of the crystal river proceed-
ing from the throne of God. The man who
has entered by the door into the sheepfold has
liberty to come out at pleasure and to bring
pasture from other folds. The words of the
Master remain valid for all time, and cogent for
all experience, * The truth shall make you free. '

LORD, in these latter days ours is the lot
of James; we are all children of the
autumn. We have not seen the springtime.
We were not among those who gazed upon Thy
visible glory. I have often regretted this. I
have often been sad that I was ' born out of
due time.' I have lamented that I have not
looked upon Thy face or heard Thy voice or
felt the clasp of Thy hand — that Thou hasl
walked in my garden only when the leaves were
falling. And to me in such mood the story
of Thy disciple James brings the sweetest of
messages. He also was too late for the spring

JAMES THE SOFTENED 237

— too late by his own fault. Yet, spite of his
lateness and spite of his blame, his autumn was
bright and glorious. Thou wert at his fire-
side, and he saw Thee not; but he felt Thy
presence when the cloud had received Thee out
of his sight. I thank Thee for that picture in
the Gallery, O Lord; it speaks to me. It
gives me hope, courage, expectation. It tells
me that Thy gifts are not limited to the morn-
ing. I too may have an autumn glory. Though
inland far I be, though I have never seen the
ocean wave, though I hear not the water of life
breaking on the shore, though the breath of
the brine has passed me by and the sparkle of
the spray has ignored me, I too may find Thee
in the silent field. Come to my autumn, O
Christ ; come to my inland life ! Come to the
leaves that are falling; come to the woods that
are thinning; come to the flowers that are fad-
ing! Bring Thine Eden to my evening, Thy
Nazareth to my night ! Kindle my western sky
with the light of the eastern star! Speak hope
to my waning years ! Sing songs to my falter-
ing feet! Plant promises in my autumn soil!

238 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Make chariots of the clouds that hide Thee!
Deliver Thy beatitudes standing on the Nebo
of my declining days! Then to me, as to Thy
disciple, there shall be light at evening time.

CHAPTER XII

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED

I AM now coming to the figure of a great preach-
er of the early Christian Church — one who in
his day enjoyed the rare privilege of being the
friend of opposite parties. I speak of the man
who was known to his contemporaries and who
is known to posterity by the name of Barnabas.
The name was not his own. It was really a
term of endearment meaning ' the son of conso-
lation, ' or, as it might be rendered, ' the son of
exhortation. ' It signified that in the opinion of
men his preaching of Christian truth was of a
most helpful nature, pouring balm on the wound-
ed and giving strength to the weary. The
name of love has stuck to him. It has painted
him to all ages as a man of supreme kindness,
of much tolerance, of wide charity — eager for

the comfort of the distressed and impressed by
239

240 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the duties which he owed to the poor. A rich
man himself, he felt that a trust had been
committed to him; a preacher of Christ's Gos-
pel, he felt that a responsibility had been laid
upon him; a member of the prophetic school,
he felt that he must help to hasten the march
to the Promised Land.

This is the second of the great Christian
preachers we have met in the Gallery. The
first was John the Baptist. Nothing can ex-
ceed the difference between these two repre-
sentatives of pulpit eloquence. The Baptist is
immured in a Jewish desert; Barnabas grows
up in the free air of Cyprus Isle and by the blue
waters of a far-sounding sea. The Baptist is all
fire; Barnabas is all persuasion. The Baptist
would break down the stubborn strongholds;
Barnabas would bind the broken hearts. The
Baptist proclaims the terrors of judgment; Bar-
nabas points to the joys of Paradise. The Bap-
tist frightens by the famine and the swine-
husks; Barnabas tempts by the ring and the
robe and the welcome.

From what sin was such a srood man con-

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 241

verted? — that is the question which rises to the
hps as we gaze on his face in the Gallery. Re-
member, I have no historical information on
the subject. I have never seen the primitive
Barnabas; when he appears before me, he is
already a leader of men. Is there any other
mode of discovering his past.-* I think there is.
Let us look at the man as he flashes before us
in the Great Gallery at the height of his Chris-
tian influence and in the blaze of his Christian
fame. Let us ask if even in this white apparel
we can discover the remains of any stain, if
even on this fair face we can find the traces
of a scar. If we can, you may be sure that
we have reached the beginnings of the man —
have put our hand on what was once a black
mark, have laid our finger on what was origi-
nally an ugly sore.

Now, beautiful as the character of Barnabas
is, we are permitted to see in it one flaw; and
we are entitled to regard this flaw as a remain-
ing trace of that which in the old days was his
besetting sin. What is it.-* I should be dis-
posed to describe it as a particular kind of pride
16

242 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

— the pride of race. I say, ' a particular kind ' of
pride. I would sharply distinguish it, for ex-
ample, from personal pride or egotism — that
kind of pride to which the evangelist John in
his early days was subject. The pride of race
is compatible with personal humility — it may
exist side by side with a sense of individual
unworthiness. The Jew, indeed, was apt to
sink himself in his country — to become person-
ally humble in proportion as he grew patriot-
ically proud. Again, I would distinguish this
pride from the pride of wealth. Barnabas was
rich, but he was not proud of his riches. In the
very first recorded scene of his life we find him
selling his land and giving the money to the
Church. But is that incompatible with the
pride of race! Would it be thought very ex-
travagant if I said that it was the pride of race
helped him to do so ? Barnabas was a Levite —
and the Levites, as individuals, had originally
no land; they were forbidden to inherit it,
and they were at first too poor to purchase it.
If, as wealth accumulated, they acquired it by
purchase, a man like Barnabas might well feel

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 243

that the ancestral glory had been departed
from — that the law had been violated in spirit
while preserved in the letter; and he might well
resolve that, in his case at least, there should
be a return to the life of his forefathers. I do
not disparage his charity — God forbid! I do
not minimise his goodness of heart — that was of
the purest. But I do say that in the achieving
of this good thing ancestral pride may well
have co-operated, and that his personal life
may have been humbled by the very conscious-
ness of his national dignity.

Unfortunately for Barnabas, it was not al-
ways to good things that this pride led him.
Perhaps I should say, ' fortunately. ' A man
only learns his defect in being chastened — in
finding that the ways in which it leads are not
ways of pleasantness nor its paths paths of
peace. If it always brought him into pastures
green, he might come to reverence it. But when
it pushes him into quagmires, drives him among
thorns, throws him down in stony places,
wanders him amid labyrinths, then the man
cries, ' There is something wrong here — some-

244 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

thing which incommodes me, hurts me, retards
me, and which at all hazards I must get rid
of.' That is the Christian history of Barna-
bas. It is the history of a man who has been
transformed from a Jew into a follower of the
Cross, but who has carried over with him a
remnant of that old ancestral pride which was
so prevalent among his countrymen. It is
the history of that process of chastening by
which this remnant of an old sin was assailed,
by which the man was made to feel that the
spirit of caste was not the spirit of consolation.
In no other light can we read with profit the
life of Barnabas. Looked at from the purely
secular side, it is a very sad life. It begins in
glorious morning; it closes in a cloudy after-
noon. It opens with music and dancing; it
concludes amid the silence. Its rise is hailed
with plaudits; its setting is marked by obscur-
ity. Very sad, I say, from a secular point of
view is this life of Barnabas. But from a
Christian point of view it reads very differently.
If you believe that this decline is a chasten-
ing, if you are convinced that the branches

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 245

lopped from the tree were useless branches, if
you feel that the adversity was a revelation
that there was still something defective in this
man's soul, then will the afternoon of Barnabas
be better than his morning and the shadows
of his obscurity more healthy than the glare of
his fame. Let us briefly follow the stream of
the narrative.

When the great preacher was in the blaze
of his glory, there came to Jerusalem another
and a rising preacher who promised in the
future to be great. It was young Saul of Tar-
sus, who after a bitter persecution of Christian-
ity had been converted to the faith he maligned
and had taken the name of Paul. There had
burst upon him the conviction that his special
call was not to his own countrymen, but to the
Gentiles; it was among these that the sun of
his fame rose. From the standpoint of the Jew
this was not a very promising beginning. That
a scion of the race of Israel should embrace
a faith which professed to be cosmopolitan,
was bad enough ; that he should single out the
Gentiles for a special interest, was maddening.

246 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Even the Jewish Christians were not prepared
to hail such an advocate. They had ahvays been
accustomed to claim the largest room; here
was a man that would dispossess them of their
privilege ! Might not this be only another form
of the persecution — an attempt to destroy Christ
by denying His special relation to the land of
their fathers ! Was this a man to be trust-
ed ! Were his antecedents such as made him
an object of trust ! Had he not been a bitter
enemy of their faith ! Was a change so sudden
as his likely to be real, or, if real, likely to be
permanent! Were they not standing on the
brink of a precipice ; let them beware !

And so, when this young preacher came to
Jerusalem, he was received coldly. Men shrank
from him as from a pestilence. There are
times when nothing can raise a man in public
estimation but the support of a powerful hand.
The man who is under disgrace, under suspi-
cion, under the ban of the multitude, will prob-
ably lie there until he is lifted by some one
higher than the multitude. But when that
happens, the influence of the one will in all

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 247

likelihood outweigh the influence of the many.
So was it with Paul. For a time he lay pros-
trate in obscurity — shunned and feared by his
Christian countrymen. Suddenly, a big hand
touched him, and two big arms lifted him up,
and a big voice proclaimed, ' This man is our
brother.' The hand, the arms, the voice, were
those of Barnabas. It was exactly the thing
we should expect Barnabas to do. He was by
nature a consoler. The sounds which first
reached his ear were ever the plaints of weak-
ness. To be downtrodden, to have everybody
against you, to be despised and rejected by your
fellow-men, was quite sufficient to place you
within sight of the sympathy of Barnabas.
His large heart took in the desolate Paul and
made a way for him in the world. He led him
to the College of Apostles. He brought him
to the President of that college — James the
Lord's brother, to win whose influence was
the key to the whole position. He told of
Paul's zeal, of his ardour, of his success. He
lost no opportunity of bringing his talents into
notice. When Paul had gone back to Tarsus

248 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

and Barnabas had gone to electrify with his
wisdom the Church at Antioch, the older preach-
er was sad because he had all the glory. He
wanted the young man to share it; he deter-
mined that he should share it. He went to
Tarsus and brought him to the scene of tri-
umph. He gave him a place among the Chris-
tian workers. He went about continually in his
company, that men might say, * There go Bar-
nabas and Paul.' He knew well the power of
association — how a tarnished name if linked
with a great name may lose its tarnish ; and
he resolved that Paul should reap the advantage
of such a union.

This was generous, this was noble. But
what if the association should be inverted !
What if in process of time the conjunction
should be, not * Barnabas and Paul, ' but ' Paul
and Barnabas ' ! It is quite a common thing to
see a mature preacher take a young preacher
under his patronage, and in a brief space to
behold the young man becoming the leader.
In the present instance this actually happened.
For a while the name of Barnabas precedes,

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 249

and that of Paul follows ; then there is a change
— the order is ' Paul and Barnabas. ' The rea-
son is plain. Paul has revealed himself as the
greater power. I do not say, as the greater
man. If Christian greatness be the spirit of
goodness, Barnabas must ever remain one of
the loftiest human souls. But if Barnabas was
unsurpassed as a man, he was surpassed as a
power. It was not long before a superior force
made itself felt in the little band — it was the
mind of Saul of Tarsus. He entered as a
dependent; he ended as a leader. He came
to the front by the sheer force of intellect.
His mind was in some respects a contrast to
that of Barnabas. Barnabas was entirely prac-
tical; Paul was, before all things, speculative.
Barnabas was naturally calm; Paul was gen-
erally on fire. Barnabas was methodical; Paul
moved on wings. Barnabas was an organiser;
Paul was an inspirer. Barnabas was a man of
counsel ; Paul was a man of genius. It was
inevitable that the stronger force should in
the long-run be the dominant force; it was
certain from the outset that the leading spirit

250 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

of the company would be, not Barnabas, but
Paul.

But the question which I ask is this. What
effect would this have upon Barnabas? Would
it touch his jealousy? Never — that, at least,
may be confidently affirmed. This man was in-
capable of jealousy. It had no part in his na-
ture, which was essentially free from individual
self-seeking. But if you ask me if it would
touch his pride of race, then, looking to what
happened afterwards, I must give a very dif-
ferent answer. I think this is the very element
in Barnabas which the superior deference paid
to Paul would touch. It is true, Paul was as
Jewish as himself and had a lineage as good
as his own. But those of whom Paul was ex-
clusively the missionary were, in the view of
Barnabas, without lineage — the Gentiles had no
descent from Abraham. Why should one who
represented the Gentiles alone, be seated on
a higher throne than one who, however tolerant
and however eager to make Gentile converts,
had been originally the representative of an
older and more venerable line — of that Church

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 251

which professed to be the latest flower of
Judaism and the fulfilment of her Messianic
dreams! Was it right, was it well, that it
should be so! Ought not the first branch to
be the cherished branch! Had it not been
deemed in days of yore the proudest of all dig-
nities to belong to the primitive fold; why had
the time come when men were turning aside
from this reverence to crown one who served
the fold of a stranger !

I think that, parallel with his own declining
influence, this was the ever-deepening thought
of Barnabas. It was not a jealous feeling, it
was not even a personal feeling; it was the
pride of race. He thought of himself, not as
an individual, but as the member of a venerable
community which, in the mind even of the
Gentile, should ever have the highest place of
reverence. Yet, impersonal as it was, the feel-
ing was the remnant of a garment which ought
to have been discarded, and which, because it
was not discarded, became a source of discord.
It was not long before the cloud brooding over
the heart was made visible in the sky. It

252 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

first gathered at Perga. John Mark, the favour-
ite nephew of Barnabas, deserted the Gentile
band and went back to the Mother Church at
Jerusalem. In the next chapter I shall speak
of him separately, and I only allude to him
now with a view to illustrate the attitude of
Barnabas. But I think his conduct has a bear-
ing on the attitude of Barnabas. When I re-
member that even after the separation the
uncle and nephew still remained on excellent
terms, when I recollect how amply it was re-
vealed in the future that the elder man had con-
doned the deed of the younger, I cannot avoid
the conclusion that in the mind of that elder
man there had risen a shadow of displeasure
which had dimmed the glory of the morning
and spread a chill through the once-genial air.

But the shadow was to deepen, the chill was
to increase. By and by there was a conference
summoned at Antioch. ' It was to be a meet-
ing for purposes of Church-union. All parties
were to be represented; all parties came. The
Gentile Christians were probably first in the field
' So I interpret Galatians ii. n-14.

- BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 253

— Antioch being a Gentile city. Then would
come the Hellenists — the men who, though now
Grecianised, had either been originally pure
Jews or had sprung from Jewish ancestors;
and these sat down beside the purely Gentile
converts. Then appeared the Jewish Chris-
tians; and they too sat down with the Hellen-
ist and the Jew. At last came deputies from
that ecclesiastical board of administration over
which James presided — men who, however lib-
eral, were full of Jewish memories and deep in
the caste of nationality. And when these came,
they would not sit down with the mass. They
were willing to make copious concessions to
the Gentiles, but not to give their company;
they could patronise, but not fraternise. They
held themselves apart. They kept in an iso-
lated corner. They constituted themselves an
inner court of the tabernacle and allowed the
party of Paul to remain outside. Gradually,
an effect was produced by this attitude. The
Jewish Christians began to steal away from the
seats they had taken and to form independent
groups. Peter quietly removed himself — but

254 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

simply from a return of his native timidity.
There was worse to follow — Barnabas removed
himself. This was not timidity, nor was it the
impulse of the hour. It must have been the
result of a long process of dissatisfaction.
Barnabas was not an impulsive man and he
was not a passionate man. What he did he did
from reflection — a reflection which, though bit-
ter, was dictated, I believe, by an erroneous
sense of duty. I think it was really at him
that Paul levelled his rebuke. He addressed
Peter, but only because he was the virtual
chairman of the company. It was Barnabas
that made him sore. It was Barnabas that
awakened his astonishment and indignation. It
was Barnabas that quickened him to the frailty
of human nature and to the inveterate and
wellnigh invincible weakness that dwells in the
heart of man.

At last the cloud descended in a stream of
piteous rain. In process of time Paul proposed
that he and Barnabas should make a second
missionary tour over the ground they had al-
ready trodden. Barnabas, you will observe, has

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 255

now ceased to be the suggester of the Gospel
programme; its ordering has passed into the
hand of Paul. Yet the former leader is willing
here to be the follower. He consents to go,
provided Paul will allow John Mark to accom-
pany them. Paul emphatically refuses. Had not
this man deserted the standard! Had he not
preferred another field to the field so dear to
Paul's heart! Were any family considerations
to alleviate the blame of such conduct! John
Mark must be viewed, not as the nephew of
Barnabas, but as a neutral party ! He must be
treated on his own merits — not as the scion of
an old house, but as if he were an individual
unbefriended, obscure, alone! Judged by that
test, he had been found wanting! There was
a rent in his garment which could not be
patched over with family colours; let the man
abide where he had elected to be. So said
Paul ; and it was the last straw. For then the
storm broke. Barnabas retorted; Paul re-
plied. The waters pent up for months burst
their barriers and rushed into the open. The
quarrel which began with being vicarious be-

256 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

came personal; mutual recriminations came,
and words ran high. At last that happened
which in such cases often happens — the less
capable combatant left the room and slammed
the door. That was in effect what Barnabas
did. He threw up his work. He abandoned
the mission. He bade farewell to the scene
of his labours, to Paul, to the comrades of his
midday. He withdrew into his shell — Cyprus.
He saw the drama of a great career fade before
him; and his life which promised to fill the
world was confined within the limits of a little
isle. There was again a change in the Gos-
pel partnership. First it had been * Barnabas
and Paul ' ; then it was ' Paul and Barnabas * ;
henceforth it was to be ' Paul ' alone.

Who was wrong in the resjilt of this quar-
rel .'' Undoubtedly Barnabas. I waive altogether
the subject of John Mark's treatment. It is
a question which is irrelevant; and it ought to
have been a question subordinate to Gospel in-
terests. Why should Barnabas have allowed
a family consideration to outweigh his work for
Christ! Why should he have diminished that

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 257

work for any discourtesy paid to his house! I
believe this last act of his was a final judg-
ment on that lingering weakness of his life —
the pride of race. I feel sure that before long
it was accepted as such by himself — as his
revelation of the pitfall in the way. Why do I
think that he lived to regret the step he had
taken} So far as I know, he and Paul never
met again; what makes me think that Barna-
bas came to shake hands in spirit.'* There are
two things which lead me to that conclusion.
One is the fact that, long years afterwards, an
extravagantly Pauline letter appeared bearing
the name of Barnabas. Its genuineness is out-
wardly very well attested; internally, the pro-
duction is thought very unlike him. The rea-
son of the supposed unlikeness is just the fact
that he is so unfettered in his treatment of the
Jewish scriptures — one would say he had passed
over to the Gentiles. Altogether, I do not my-
self think that he is the author of that letter;
but I do think that the fact of its being attrib-
uted to him shows where, in his last years, his

mind was known to lie. It shows that in the
17

258 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

opinion of his contemporaries his life, as it
neared the setting sun, came nearer and ever
nearer to that ocean of universal love in which
Paul bathed all the day — where there was
neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Roman,
bond nor free — where the only flag unfurled
was the flag of humanity.

But there is another reason why I think
the closing years of Barnabas were years of
reconciliation. The nephew came back to Paul
— came back under circumstances which made
the sacrifice all on his side and the gain en-
tirely on Paul's. As the subject will recur
hereafter I shall not dwell upon it here. The
one point is that the nephew did come back —
came back at a time when love alone could
have brought him. And when we consider that
after Paul had rejected his services he had gone
to live with his uncle, his act of reconcilia-
tion throws back its light upon Barnabas. It
shows clearly that the spirit of Barnabas had
been sweetened by the years. If the impression
left by the uncle on the nephew's mind had
been one of bitterness, he would have shunned

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 259

Paul for evermore. We do not love those by
whom a near and dear relative has been stung,
even where the sting has been justly implanted.
The return of John Mark proves to my mind
that from the breast of Barnabas the sting had
been long extracted, and that in its room had
been planted the spirit of reconciliation. It
proves that, in his sphere of comparative im-
prisonment in the isle of Cyprus, the heart of
Barnabas, at least, had burst its chain. Though
no longer he was aiding Paul with the hand, \
his soul was going with him. His sympathies
were breaking forth from Cyprus and following
his companion of early years — rejoicing in his
triumphs, sharing in his griefs, participating
in his burdens, joining in his prayers. The
outward union to him personally was not to be
restored ; but the union in the spirit was already
complete, and to his kinsman he left the clasp-
ing of the hands.

LORD, let not the sun go down upon my
wrath! Life is too short for quarrels.
Yet it is not because life is short that I would

26o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

have peace. It is because eternity is long.
How strange my old quarrels look in the light
of vanished years! Methinks they will look
stranger still in the light of Thine eternity.
I am ambitious now, and I shall be ambitious
then; but the things for which I am ambitious
now are not the things for which I shall be am-
bitious then. Now I strive to get ; then I
shall strive to give. Now I seek possession;
then I shall try to be dispossessed. Now I
covet the uppermost seat; then I shall descend
the stair. Now I select the best robe; then I
shall choose the servant's form. I see Paul
and Barnabas standing before Thy presence,
and there is still a strife between them. But
the cause of strife is changed — Paul wishes
Barnabas to be first, and Barnabas is eager
to remain second; they zuonder at their old
quarrel in the light of Thy throne. Reveal
that light to me, O Lord ! In my hour of quar-
rel, in the hour when I strive to be first, give
me a glimpse of the soul's last judgment on
itself — its reversed judgment ! Let me see
Cain rejoicing over the acceptance of Abel's

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 261

sacrifice! Let me see Lot repudiating the
richer share! Let me see Sarah making a
home for Ishmael! Let me see Jacob refusing
his brother's birthright! Let me see Joseph
exalting his brethren in his dreams! Let me
see David take Uriah's place in the battle!
Let me see Jonah intent on sparing Nineveh!
Let me see Herod exulting in the sustenance
of the babes of Bethlehem! Then shall the
light of eternity arrest the strife of time; Paul
and Barnabas shall stand side by side.

CHAPTER XIII

MARK THE STEADIED

On that night in which Jesus was betrayed,
all who were with Him in the Garden forsook
Him and fled. But there was one who fol-
lowed Him though he had not been with Him
in the Garden. When the soldiers came out to
the public road leading their august prisoner, an
obscure young man did what the others had
feared to do — took a few steps in company with
Jesus. It was only a few steps — his strength
was not equal to the strain; when the soldiers
laid hands upon his garment he left it in
their hands and fled like the rest. Yet he had
gone a yard or two further than the men of
the Garden in the following of Jesus. He had at
least made a movement forward, not backward ;
and, by that short walk, 'he, being dead,

yet speaketh.' I doubt not that the recording
262

MARK THE STEADIED 263

angel wrote down his name, or rather his name-
lessness, as a proof that the obscure may often
surpass the illustrious, and that he expressed
the sense of his superiority to the watchers in
the Garden by affixing the inscription, ' A day*s
march nearer home.'

Now, in the view of tradition this young man
was Mark the Evangelist. It is in his Gospel
the story is told, and he has been thought by
many to be speaking of himself. Let it be un-
derstood, once for all, that when I say ' Mark
the Evangelist ' I mean every man who in the
New Testament is mentioned by the name of
Mark — whether it be John Mark or the Mark
whom Paul summons to Rome or the Mark who
resides with Peter in Babylon. I prejudge no
question of criticism as to matters of fact. But
when the question is simply. What is meant
to be conveyed by the artist? I have no hesita-
tion in accepting the belief that in the design of
the Gallery they are all one and the same per-
son. My whole province here is to expound
the Gallery. I shall start therefore with the
assumption that in the Gallery of the New

264 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Testament there is but one figure of the name
— a figure which passes through a variety of
changes in its transition from youth to maturity
— which rises in the heart of Jerusalem and is
lost to view in the heart of Rome — which is
known to its contemporaries as the nephew of
Barnabas and to all posterity as the writer of
a Gospel, We shall endeavour to weave into
unity these various threads, which at first seem
separate and independent, and to present the
picture of this man as the representative of a
distinct idea and the embodiment of a special
thought.

Whether John Mark be or be not the young
man described at the egress from the Garden,
there can be no doubt that the description suits
him. We see there the picture of a splendid
advance and a sudden recoil. That is exactly
the portrait of Mark. If I were asked to indi-
cate his leading feature, I should define him as
' the unsteady man. ' Let me explain precisely
what I mean. It is quite a common thing among
ourselves to say of a young man, ' Unfortunate-
ly, he is not steady. ' But when we say that, we

MARK THE STEADIED 265

always imply one thing — that he is not steady
in well-doing. We generally apply the phrase
to one who, after walking awhile in pastures
green, is found staggering with drink in street
and lane. That is certainly an interruption of
steadiness; but it is not the unsteadiness of
which I here speak, nor that which I attribute
to John Mark. In the broad and strict sense of
the word, unsteadiness has no more to do with
ill-doing than with well-doing. An unsteady
young man is a young man who is unable to keep
to one definite purpose — who in a brief space
deserts it for another. So far as this quality is
concerned, it matters nothing whether he wavers
between the good and the bad, between the bad
and the bad, or between the good and the good;
each of these cases alike implies an irreso-
lute will. Many a man turns from one occupa-
tion to another with perfect honesty and per-
fect conviction. He may begin by trying to
write history; then he may attempt science;
then he may aspire to poetry ; then he may take
up the work of the artist. We call such an
unsteady man. Not one of the conflicting aims

266 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

is bad — they are each good and noble. But the
fact that in the man's mind they are conflict-
ing, proves him to be unsteady. I do not think
that John Mark ever deserted a good cause for
a bad; the point is that he was constantly de-
serting one cause for another. This is why I
call him ' Mark the unsteady. ' He stands as
a representative of the man who does not know
his own mind, the unstable man, the wavering
man. His impulses are all for good; but they
are not long directed toward the same good; it
is the blue to-day, the green to-morrow, the
red next day. He never sinks to the degraded;
but he has no permanent interest in any particu-
lar cause which is sublime.

When we first meet the name of John Mark,
he is already a Christian. He was in an ad-
mirable atmosphere for becoming a Christian.
He belonged to a Christian family. His uncle
was Barnabas. His mother was Mary of Jeru-
salem— a woman of worldly means and unworld-
ly piety. Her house in the Jewish metropolis
was a place of rendezvous — a salon where met
from time to time the leaders of the faith.

MARK THE STEADIED 267

Sometimes it was for purposes of prayer, some-
times for exhortation, sometimes for social in-
tercourse. Amid the amenities of this circle
young Mark enjoyed great advantages; he
learned the nature of Christianity almost from
the fountainhead, and he saw it represented in
its adaptation to varied minds. The man whom
he first met was the man who bound the earli-
est cord round his heart; it was Simon Peter.
The Master had given to Peter the key to many
human doors; and the door of Mark's spirit
opened to him of its own accord. There was
something in the natures of these men which
drew them into harmony. They had both natu-
rally the same mental disease — a wavering will.
The causes of the malady were of course very
different. Peter was originally timid and was
frightened by the first cloud; Mark was con-
stitutionally volatile and was drawn elsewhere
by the second sunbeam. Yet the fact of a com-
mon disease made a common sympathy, while
the difference of its cause created a power of
mutual help. If the wavering in each case had
come from the same source, Peter and Mark

268 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

might have been sympathisers; but they never
could have been helpers, for mutual help de-
mands that each should possess an element which
is lacking m the other. The blended likeness
and difference of these men united them on
two sides.

Then, by and by, there came to Jerusalem
the man who was to become the other figure
of the apostolic age — Paul of Tarsus. He was
brought by Barnabas as a fellow-worker in the
relieving of a great famine. Here Mark for
the first time met Paul. I do not think the man
of Tarsus made as much impression upon him as
Peter had done. There was little resemblance
in their characters. If Mark was wavering,
Paul was inflexible. If Mark had many objects
of attraction, Paul had only one. If Mark was
drawn aside by passing sentiment, Paul was
bound by the chain of a permanent love. Nor
do I think that at this stage the cause of Paul
was the cause of Mark. I believe that origi-
nally the heart of the latter was not with the
Gentiles, but with the Jews. It is not often that
the younger generation is less liberal than the

MARK THE STEADIED 269

older; but I think Mark was far more con-
servative than his uncle Barnabas. They had
lived in a different environment. Barnabas had
dwelt in the comparatively free air of Cyprus,
and had seen many phases of many minds.
He was in the position of the man of travel.
He had come to find that there must be allowed
a certain amount of latitude for human thought,
and that we cannot expect all men to be shaped
in one mould. Mark, on the other hand, was
a child of Jerusalem. With Jerusalem were
linked his earliest, and therefore his fondest,
associations. It was the home of his happiest
years, the scene of his most cherished memo-
ries. Religion itself had come to him there,
and had come in a joyous dress— wreathed with
social interest and decked with colours gay.
Jerusalem was very dear to Mark, and anything
that disparaged her, anything that would tend
to put her in the second place, must have been
strongly distasteful to him. The enthusiasm for
the Gentile world was not to him the most joy-
ful of sounds.

Nevertheless, Barnabas requested that his

270 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

nephew should accompany him in his mission-
ary tour with Paul. I think the proposal came
from Barnabas. I think he was afraid that
the young man was getting inured to a narrow
atmosphere. If Paul had made the request
it is probable it would have been refused.
But when it came from the uncle, when it was
dictated by solicitude for Mark's mental enlarge-
ment, when it was an appeal for companionship
by one for whom he cherished an affection and
who cherished an affection for him, it spoke
to impulses outside of religion and impulses
which were fitted to strike the youthful mind.
Mark said, ' I will go. '

Accordingly, when Paul and Barnabas depart-
ed from Jerusalem they took Mark with them.
It was a very unpromising beginning for a mis-
sionary career. No man should enter on such
a career with any motive less than zeal for the
cause. Every step of Mark's journey increased
his homesick longing for the Christian Church
of Jerusalem. I know that his discontent has
been attributed to lower motives. Men have
spoken of him as lazy, idle, somnolent, unwill-

MARK THE STEADIED 271

ing to put his hand to the plough lest it should
be soiled, averse to expose his life lest it should
be sacrificed. A more ungenerous verdict was
never pronounced — it is refuted by his whole
life. Mark was not a selfish man ; he was never
an idle man ; in his later years he was the re-
verse of a timid man — and these are the only
years when he had a real chance of displaying
himself. His bane was that he was a man of
two ideas — not of one. His was not a struggle
between the love of action and the love of ease.
It was a struggle with the temptation to act
in different ways either of which would in itself
be good. It was in the present instance a
struggle whether to abide with Paul or to re-
turn to Peter. A man of steady will would have
battled down the temptation to return. But
Jerusalem the Golden, the Jerusalem of his
youth, the Jerusalem of his earliest joys, was
too strong for him ; it kept a corner in his heart
and would not let him go.

So, when the little company arrived at Per-
ga, Mark suddenly disappeared. I know not in
what manner he effected his departure — whether

272 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

he simply abandoned them or made an excuse
for absence or wrote a respectful letter of resig-
nation. It may be safely said that nothing
could confer dignity on his departure. Paul
could only receive it as a slight to the cause
which was dearest to his heart — a slight all the
more impressive and all the more stinging be-
cause it came from the nephew of the very man
who had been his patron in the hour of need;
it was apt to make men say, * If Paul's own
friends desert him, we need not wonder at what
his enemies do.' Mark went back to Jerusa-
lem. He was probably received with contempt
— as a rolling stone. A rolling stone he cer-
tainly was; but it was not rolling downhill.
His was really a case of religious homesickness.
He was attached to the Church of his fathers.
Their city was to him the sacred city, their tem-
ple the model and pattern of the house of God.
His heart could not beat in unison with a move-
ment which centred round other cities and bowed
the knee at other shrines. He was jealous for
the place of his birth, for the school of his relig-
ious training, for the associations and memories

MARK THE STEADIED 273

of his youth; and he was unwilling to bear a
part in the injuring of these. There was an ele-
ment of true loyalty in the weakness of John
Mark.

By and by something happened at Jerusalem
which modified Mark's view. A conciliatory
council was held there to soften the differences
between Jews and Gentiles. As the result of
that council the Church at Jerusalem gave a
patronising recognition to the Gentiles. Phleg-
matic and unaccompanied with enthusiasm as
the recognition was, it suggested to Mark the
possibility of another rolling movement on his
part. Was not Paul put in a new light by this
act of the council ! Had not the Mother
Church taken him under her wing! Had not
Jerusalem given him her blessing! Could not
Mark now offer his services to Paul without
being disloyal to Jerusalem ! On the former
occasion he had felt like a traitor to the past;
but surely that reproach could not exist now !
Might he not go back to Paul and say, ' My
Church has publicly recognised the rights of

the Gentiles; I may with a clear conscience
18

274 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

return to you ' ! And then, his uncle Barnabas
was pleading with him to come back. He
missed the nephew's company. His relations
with Paul had become somewhat strained. He
had begun to feel alone and unbefriended. He
wanted a kinsman — some one to whom he
could pour out his heart. When Mark consid-
ered all these things he was disposed to return.
He allowed Barnabas to make the proposal to
Paul. But Paul refused to receive him — and
from his point of view he may be excused in
so doing. His strong and inflexible nature could
not respect rolling stones. He was unwilling
to admit into his band of workers a weak and
wavering soul. Mark had recently deserted
his cause; why in so brief a space should he
change his mind again ! Was such a rapid re-
conversion any compliment to that cause, or
did it give any security for permanent ad-
herence ! Would not the enrolling of such a
man be only the introducing into the ranks of
an element of weakness and the sowing of un-
promising seed in a healthy and fertile field !
But if the modern spectator can excuse Paul,

MARK THE STEADIED 275

Barnabas could not; he threw up the cause
and retired to Cyprus. He did not go alone.
He asked Mark to accompany him — which
shows that his wish to bring him back had
been rather personal than ecclesiastical. And
here the unfortunate Mark again changes his
front. He goes to Cyprus. He had been a
Jew; he had been a Jewish Christian; he
had been a Gentile Christian; he had been a
Jewish Christian once more; he was well-
nigh becoming a Gentile Christian once more.
Thwarted in this last resolve, what does he be-
come now.-* What name should we give to him
in Cyprus ."^ I would call him the companion to
a good man. I think he went neither for Jew
nor Gentile, but purely for the sake of Barnabas.
I have heard men sneer at this mission to Cy-
prus. I have seen Christian writers point with
scorn to the narrow sphere he had chosen for
his labours and the life of laziness he had
purchased for his soul. It is an ungenerous
sneer. The mission of Mark to Cyprus was not
a religious mission. It was a mission of human
sympathy — sympathy for a private friend. He

276 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

went to comfort the grief and cheer the solitude
of one who had always loved and befriended
him and whose very sorrow had been incurred
in the effort to do him service. You may call
his journey to Cyprus another movement of
the stone; yet it was a movement not toward
worldly pleasure but toward Christian sacrifice.

How long Mark remained in Cyprus I do
not know — it may have been for years. In
any case, it must have been a time of much
benefit, moral and intellectual. He met the
Gentiles in a field where there was no conflict
— the life of social intercourse. He was able
to look at them as men and women bearing a
common burden — to view them as fellow-citi-
zens apart from creed, apart from sect, apart
from church-membership, and to feel that the
soul of man was larger than his systems. I
doubt not that the days of Mark in Cyprus
did him good.

But there was coming to this man a greater
good still — an event which was to be the turn-
ing-point of his life. There came to him one
day a call from across the sea; and the voice

MARK THE STEADIED 277

that uttered it was that of the man who had
attracted his youthful years — Simon Peter. He
called on Mark to help him — not as a mission-
ary, but as a secretary. The former fisher-
man of Galilee knew well the advantage he
would reap from superior culture. He knew
that Mark had received that culture — that he
had possessed from youth all the opportunities
which wealth can bring. There had been no
hindrance to his education. He had enjoyed the
influences of social refinement and the ameni-
ties of a happy home. He had not been tossed
upon the sea as he himself had been, but had
been allowed to pitch his tent upon the hill.
His superior leisure had given him superior
learning. Peter wanted such a man — one who
could clothe his thoughts and interpret them to
the people. Mark heard his cry for help, and
he said, ' I will go. ' Barnabas himself must
have urged him to go. All through his life
no such suitable opening had appeared for
John Mark. It was a place made for him, cut
out for him, fitted to bring into bold relief all
that was best and truest and noblest within him,

278 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

and to waken that which had long been asleep
in his heart — a definite purpose in living.

Little did John Mark know where in this
new occupation his opening was to lie. It was
not in having a fixed profession. It was not
in being thrown into direct contact with the
apostles. It was not even in the companion-
ship with so great a soul as Peter. It was in
a greater companionship — that of Christ Him-
self. Mark received from Peter the notes of
a Gospel. When he put these together there
emerged a portrait of the Master — the first
portrait of the Master that was ever presented
to the human eye. As Mark gazed upon the
unexpected result of his own handiwork, his
spirit was stirred within him. What did he
see } The one thing he needed to see — an
aim in life. Hitherto he had wavered between
Jew and Gentile. As he looked into that face,
Jew and Gentile alike vanished, and there shone
out only one form — Man. Jerusalem faded ;
Antioch faded ; and over the blank spaces there
rose the republic of human souls. As he gazed
upon that portrait there dawned on him a

MARK THE STEADIED 279

great thought — the idea that what gave men
equal rights was neither Judaism nor Gentil-
ism, but the common cross of humanity. What
was that earliest portrait of the Master which
we now call the Gospel of Mark? It was the
picture which delineated a great physician — a
healer of human woes. It was the portrait of
a soul that had put deeds in the place of words
— that felt life was too short for verbal contro-
versy and must be approached by the work of
the hand. It was the depicting of one who
did not ask at the outset, 'Are you a Jew ? '
' Are you a Gentile .-' ' * Are you a worshipper
of any kind .'' ' but whose primary question was,
* Have you anything requiring to be healed } '

And this portrait woke Mark's soul. There
rose within him a great resolve — he would fol-
low that picture of the Master. He would
stand aside in the question between Gentile
and Jew; he would devote himself to a larger
problem. He would become a sick-nurse to
humanity, a minister to human need. And by
and by there occurred a chance for testing his
resolve. His old antagonist Paul came to the

28o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

depths of sorrow. His splendid missionary
career was at last interrupted; the bird was
arrested in its flight, and caged. The apos-
tle, trapped by his Jewish countrymen, lan-
guished within a prison at Caesarea. A
thought comes to Mark. Was not this the
place in which the definite purpose of his life
should begin ! Could there be a better time
for indecision to vanish and wavering to cease!
He had determined to follow the healing foot-
steps of Jesus; were they not leading him first
of all to Cassarea to help his opponent of for-
mer days ! Paul had doubted the genuineness
of his Gentilism; would he doubt the genuine-
ness of his humanity ! If he went to him in his
poverty, in his bneliness, in his hour of enforced
inaction — if he brought wealth to supply his
needs, fellowship to meet his solitude, a min-
istrant hand to assist his weariness — would not
Paul at last believe in him ! Mark resolves that
he will yield to Paul's adversity the homage
which he had refused to his prosperity, and
that he will lend to his hours of weakness the
service of a slave to his master.

i

MARK THE STEADIED 281

We know how gloriously his promise was
fulfilled; there was no faltering, no paltering,
no altering, any more. He came to the prison
at Caesarea and supplicated permission to serve.
I know not how Paul received him. Perhaps
at first the gifts appeared anonymously — Paul
may have been beguiled into love. But I know
that ere long he was conscious of Mark's no-
bleness — conscious that at last a steady race
had begun. Almost the latest act of his life
was to look back on these days at Caesarea, and
record his sense of how profitable this man's
ministration had been. He gives him his
word of recommendation — he asks the Church
to receive him. Nay, there is something more
touching still. When the apostle's last day is
drawing near, when death stares him in the face,
when most of the companions of his former
years have fled, who is it that he asks for, who
is it that he longs to see.'' It is Mark. I can
imagine no greater compliment paid by man to
man. I should think it worth while to be re-
jected a hundred times if as a recompense I
received such an approach at last. Did Mark

282 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

go? I feel sure he did. I have no doubt that
he went with Timothy to Rome to cheer Paul's
latest hours; and I believe that he remained
there to lead the ambulance corps of human-
ity. There, not inappropriately, we shall leave
him — in the city of the steadfast, in the place
where of all others men had learned the wis-
dom of inflexible tenacity. That city will con-
firm him in his acquired robustness, and he
will impart to her somewhat of his original soft-
ness; and it may be that from this union there
shall at length emerge a beautiful and harmoni-
ous blend.

LORD, I should like to join the ambulance
corps of humanity. I would rather be
a member of that band than either a Gentile
or a Jew. Thou art leading our age where
Mark was led — to the bearing of the cross.
Never has Thy portrait been studied so deeply
as now. In past days we studied other por-
traits, and therefore we aspired to other things
than the human. We gazed on Paul and cried,
* Great is the mystery of Godhead ! ' We gazed

MARK THE STEADIED 283

on Peter and said, ' Show us the things which
the angels desire to look into ! ' We gazed on
John and exclaimed, ' Let us see the city of
gold ! ' We gazed on Matthew and breathed
the prayer, ' Unroll the book of prophecy ! '
These were aspirings after heaven. But it is
only now that we have begun to aspire after
earth, have desired to see its mysteries un-
veiled. It is only in gazing into Thy face that
we have seen the face of our brother-man.
Thou hast kept the best wine till the last. O
Lord. I had been long seeking to pierce the
clouds of nature, but I had never pierced the
cloud in my brother's soul — never till I saw
Thee. Now there has come to me a new evan-
gel, nay, the old misread evangel. Thou hast
said to my soul, ' Why standest thou gazing up
into heaven! the Son of Man is coming down
from heaven to earth.' I asked Thee to open
the sky ; Thou hast said, * Open the prison
doors ! ' I asked Thee for a tabernacle on the
mount ; Thou hast said, * Heal the demoniac
on the plain ! ' I asked Thee for a sign of Thy
coming; Thou hast said, 'It will be man's

284 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

humanity to man.' I asked Thee how I
should learn Thy doctrine; Thou hast said,
* Feed my sheep ! ' I asked for a gate into the
temple; Thou hast pointed to a door in the
hospital. I asked for Thy robing-room; Thou
hast shown me an orphanage home. I asked
to drink of Thy cup; Thou hast sent me to
scenes of misery. I asked to share Thy glory;
Thou hast called me to restore one fallen
soul. The service to my Father has become
the service to my brother; give me a place, O
Lord, in earth's ambulance corps!

CHAPTER XIV

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED

It may seem strange that I should place the
name of Cornelius after those of Barnabas and
Mark. Cornelius only figures at the dawn of
the apostolic age, Barnabas and Mark survive
into its midday; why fall back from a later to
an earlier life? It is because in these pages I
have followed a definite principle of chronol-
ogy. I have placed first in order of time those
figures of the Gallery which came into clear
and undoubted contact with the earthly life of
the Master — Peter, John, Thomas, and the like.
Next in order of time I have placed the two
men whose contact with the earthly Christ is
doubtful — Barnabas and Mark. The former
is said to have been one of the seventy to
whom Christ personally intrusted a mission;

the latter, as I have already stated, has been
28s

286 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

traditionally identified with the young man who
followed Jesus from the Garden. These, how-
ever, are matters of conjecture, and so I have
given to the subjects of them a later place.
After these I have put those who neither in
history nor in tradition have been enrolled amid
the band which in His human form beheld
the Lord. Foremost among these in point of
time is the man Cornelius. He is not a Jew-
ish figure; he is not even an Eastern figure.
He is a man of the West, a European, a
Roman. He is not only separated from out-
ward contact W\\.h. Jesus ; he is separated from
outward contact with the environment of Je-
sus. His life has been spent m war — in the
service of an empire whose aims were not
Messianic. He had breathed the atmosphere
of the camp rather than the air of Calvary,
had heard, not sermons on the mount, but
ribald jests on the highway. Cornelius was the
child of an empire which had passed its merid-
ian glory — the empire of Tiberius, the empire
of Caligula, the empire which had lost the form
of sound words and the semblance of good deeds.

CORNELroS THE TRANSPLANTED 287

He had not been born within the compass of
church bells.

By and by this man, as the captain of a regi-
ment, was ordered to Caesarea. He was sent
there to represent the fact of Roman conquest,
to exercise a military surveillance over the dis-
trict. But, all the time that he was keeping
military watch over Judea, Judea kept moral
watch over him. He came to represent Rome's
conquest of Israel; he ended by representing
Israel's conquest of Rome. He was converted
by his own dependents — converted to the faith
of Judaism. His nature became transformed.
The dissolute man grew devout. The proud
man became prayerful. The grasping man be-
gan to lavish gratuities. The undomesticated
man took up the duties of a household, and spe-
cially the care of its religious life. Cornelius
was conquered by the moral power of Judaism.
There are souls that in their ascent to Chris-
tianity pass first through the faith of their
ancestors. Cornelius was one of these. He be-
gan as a Pagan, the worshipper of many gods.
Then he rose to be a Jew, the worshipper of

288 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

one God of righteousness. Another step re^
mained to make him perfect ; he had to become
a Christian, the worshipper of a God of grace.
We are disposed, indeed, to wonder what
was lacking to Cornelius. His Jewish faith is
described in such glowing colours that we are
tempted to ask what more could be desired.
A man of devoutness, a man of prayer, a man
of domestic virtue, a man of public charity —
has he not already done everything which a
Christian can do! Perhaps. A boy who has
been through the school methods of arithmetic
can do everything in matters of calculation that
an office -clerk can do. But he will not do it
in the same manner, nor with the same quick-
ness, and therefore he could not be an office-
clerk. Before he can become that, he must
get rid of his school method, and learn a short
road to the goal. The most perfect penmanship
will not fit a man to be a reporter. In process
of time he could by ordinary penmanship do all
that the reporter does; but the process of time
is just what is denied to him ; there is required
a shorthand process. That is what Cornelius

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 289

needed. He could calculate splendidly, he
could write beautifully; but he could do both
only by school methods. He wanted a means
of coming to the goal with more ease and with
more rapidity — of reaching the summit of the
hill, not by an act of laborious climbing, but
by the movement of an eagle's wing. This
was the new stage that was coming to Cornelius.
The strange thing is that in teaching Corne-
lius His own new evangel, God is represented
in this picture as following the old - school
method. The man is to be taught a quick way
of reaching heaven; but he is taught it in a
most cumbrous, lengthy, and laborious manner.
Have you ever considered the singular charac-
ter of that picture in the tenth chapter of
Acts. The man Cornelius is about to receive
the Holy Spirit — the most unfettered gift which
the Divine can bestow upon the human. Why
does it not come unfettered to Cornelius.-' We
should expect that it would have rushed into
bis soul like a flash of sunshine, like a breath of
morning. Does it.? Listen to the lengthened

process! There comes to him a shining angel
19

ago THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

and tells him that he is under the favour of
heaven. He bids Cornelius send men to Joppa
to summon Simon Peter, and gives directions
for finding his lodging. Three men are sent
on a day's journey to invite the apostle to Joppa
— two domestics of Cornelius and a soldier who
waited on him. One would think the Divine
would have quicker modes of telegraphy ! In
the meantime, Peter also is prepared by a vis-
ion for the receiving of a Gentile convert, is
told to count nothing common or unclean. One
asks. What need of this preparation — ought he
not to have known that in the seed of Abraham
all nations were to be blessed ! Then Peter is
wakened from his dream by a knocking at the
door, and the three messengers of Cornelius en-
ter. They tell their story, and abide the whole
day. Next morning they set out for Caesarea,
accompanied by Peter and a retinue of his
fellow-Christians; and it is the following day
before they arrive. Cornelius, too, has gath-
ered to meet Peter a company of his kinsmen.
He falls down before the apostle in an attitude
of worship — showing that the Paganism was not

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 291

quite dead in his nature. Peter raises him up
and bids him transfer his homage to Jesus.
Then follows a sermon on the life and work of
Jesus; and, as the words strike the ear, the
gift of God at last descends, and Cornelius and
his whole company are filled with the Holy
Ghost.

Now, to what purpose is this waste! Why
extend over three days an act that might have
been momentary ! Why use so much machinery
for a deed that might have been spontaneous!
The Divine Spirit required no human message
to Joppa — much less three messengers. Simon
Peter could not bring Cornelius one step near-
er to God Almighty ; he was already as near as
he could be without touching Him. Why re-
vert to the stage-coach when we have the rail-
way-train ! The Spirit's province is to blow
where it listeth — as the lightning cometh out
of the east and shineth even unto the west
There must be some cause for this choice of a
long way. If an object is within reach of your
hand and you ring a bell to call from the other
end of the house some one who will give it to

292 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

you, it is clear you must have a motive beyond
the acquiring of the object. Can we discover
any motive for the use of so many hands in the
conversion of one man?

I think we can. Remember who this one
man is. He is a soldier. The design of this
picture is to delineate the transplanting of a
soldier. I say, ' the transplanting.' Cornelius
is not to be annihilated and created a new man.
His soldierly qualities are to be transferred to
a Christian soil. But if you want to do that,
you must approach Cornelius as a soldier.
You must allow Christianity to come to him in
a military form. If you look at the narrative
in this light you will see how singularly appro-
priate the experience was to the man. Consider
for one thing that the entire constitution of an
army rests on mutual dependence. No one
can be a successful soldier as an individual;
he requires the co - operation of his fellows.
Imagine that what Cornelius wanted had been,
not the spirit of Christ, but the spirit of Mars,
the god of war. On what condition could Mars
have promised his spirit to Cornelius.^ Only

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 293

on the condition that the same spirit should be
shared by many others, and that the common
inspiration should make itself felt in the ranks.
One soldier can no more make a victory than
one swallow can make a summer. If there is a
divided interest, there is a divided allegiance.
If one part of the ranks has the notion that
another part is animated by a different spirit,
the former will not only distrust the latter —
they will distrust their own strength, will be
paralysed in their own energy. If the god of
war had appeared to Cornelius he must have
told him that the state of things in Caesarea
ivould be affected by the state of things at
Joppa.

Now, to this phase of the soldier-life Chris-
tianity made appeal when it spoke to Cornelius.
He had asked the spirit of Jesus in room of the
spirit of Mars ; yet the new spirit addressed him
in the garb of the old. God revealed Himself as
the leader of an army, and Cornelius was made
to feel that he was being treated as a soldier.
The voice said to him : * Get as many as you
can to take an interest in the cause in which you

294 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

are interested. Enlist your two servants and
the soldier who waits upon you. Enlist your
kinsmen and friends. Enlist the sympathies of
Simon Peter and those who are in his train.
Let the representatives of all classes give a sub-
scription to your cause — the domestic, the sol-
dier, the church-dignitary, the church -worker,
the companions of the social hour. Let them
each have a stone in the temple, a window in
the building. Bring me not your own heart
alone, but the sense that other hearts are in
union with yours.'

This, then, I take to be the first reason for
the protracted process in the conversion of
Cornelius. The design is to transplant a sol-
dier, and therefore he is approached as a military
man — ^as one who has always associated victory
with the co-operation of the many. But I come
to a second reason for the protraction of the
process, and one which also lies in the appeal
to a soldier. For, an army is characterised, not
only by the mutual dependence of its members,
but by their common life of sacrifice. In time
of war the essence of military life is its sacri-

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 295

ficial character. I say, in time of war. There
may be license in time of peace — the Roman
soldier was then no paragon. But in war there
is no life so full of sacrifice. Nor do I think
that the main stress of military sacrifice lies in
the hour of battle. There have been men in
the heat of battle who have for a time been
unconscious of their wounds. It seems to me
that the sorest part of a soldier's military life
is in the things which defer the battle, in the
objects which impose delay. It is in the long
and weary marches, in the treading of arduous
ground, in the exposure to thirst and hunger,
in the fatigue and lassitude which accompany a
burning sun, in the demand to keep up the
spirit when there is no excitement, no call to
action, no enemy in view — it is there that the
sacrifice of the soldier appears. I believe that
the deepest sacrifices in the soul of man are not
in life's actual battlefield, but in its moments
of silent endurance. Many a man can resist the
winecup in company who cannot resist it in soli-
tude ; for the idea of a thing is ever more power-
ful than itself, and its image in the heart out-

296 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

weighs its image in the hand. The life of the
soldier has embodied a truth of humanity.

Now, it is to this life of the soldier that in the
case of Cornelius Christianity appeals. Cor-
nelius is in hot haste to reach his goal — the
Advent of the Divine Spirit. That will be to
him the beginning of the real battle with sin;
the day of the Spirit's coming will be to Cor-
nelius the day of conquest — and with all his
might he longs for it. But he must be treated
as a soldier ; he must be made to pass through a
soldier's sacrifice. The conquest might come
at once; but that would not be the revelation
to a soldier. God must speak to Cornelius in
his own language — and that language is mili-
tary sacrifice. Instead cf reaching his goal in
a moment, let him wait for it anxious days,
march for it long miles, weave for it arduous
plans. Let him for the sake of it submit to the
temporary loss of two of his servants. Let him
for a time dispense with the services of his
favourite attendant — a soldier who knows his
special wants and when to meet them. Let
him, above all, sink his pride. Proud Roman

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 297

as he was, representative of Roman conquest
as he was, let him bow the knee to one who had
been a fisherman of Galilee and acknowledge
that in matters spiritual the peasant was his liege
lord. I think there is something grandly appro-
priate in the delay imposed on the soldier Cor-
nelius.

But there is, I think, a third element in mili-
tary life which constitutes a ground for the
appropriateness of the delay. The life of the
soldier, whether he means it or not, is a vicari-
ous one; it is lived for the sake of others, A
man may live sacrificially and yet may live pure-
ly for himself. The artist may scorn delights
and spend laborious days, yet he may be animat-
ed by a motive essentially selfish — the achieving
of some work that will perfect his fame. But
the average soldier can have no such motive.
To a man of the ranks, even to a man, like
Cornelius, a little above the ranks, the chance
of winning distinction is infinitesimally small;
and the pay is not worth striving for. There
is an elimination of all personal feeling — even
the feeling of enmity. The man is at war with

298 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

something he does not hate. He is fighting
the battle of another — his country. Voluntarily
or involuntarily, it is for her he makes long
marches, it is for her he bears the drought and
the famine, it is for her he endures privation
and weariness, it is for her he dares the path
of death and braves the mutilation of life and
limb. The soldier, whether he knows it or not,
whether he accedes to it or not, is working
for another's joy.

So, when Christianity comes to Cornelius it
appeals to this fact of the military experience.
It bids him connect his conversion, not with his
own glory, but with the glory of others. It tells
him to calculate, not how happy he will be, but
how many people he will make happy. And
think for a moment how beautifully this purpose
is achieved. Cornelius submitted to a proc-
ess which robbed him of all glory. He took a
back seat. He subsided into the place of a
passive recipient. He gave the post of action
to his servants, to his private attendant, to the
Christians at Joppa, above all to Simon Peter.
It was to enlarge Peter, not to enlarge him-

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 299

self, that Cornelius was directed to the Chris-
tian apostle. Cornelius might have reached the
kingdom at a bound; but Peter would have
felt sore that a man should mount to heaven
without circumcision. The Divine Voice said :
'There must be no soreness on this birthday.
I must first liberalise Peter — must stoop to win
his approval. I must send him up to the roof of
the tanner's house at Joppa. I must tell him
to look forth upon the sea — that sea on which
rested the eyes of my prophet Jonah. And
when he remembers Jonah he will remember
Nineveh. He will remember how even on the
heathen city my compassion failed not to fall —
though circumcision was not there, though tem-
ple was not there, though rite of Jewish worship
was not there. He will remember and he will
say, "What God has cleansed let me not call
unclean ! " And then I shall cry to Peter,
"Come thyself, and cure Cornelius!" Cor-
nelius needs him not; but Jie sadly needs Cor-
nelius. He wants to be broadened, deepened,
heightened ; I shall make him put his hand upon
the Gentile and speak peace. For the sake

300 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

of another's joy Cornelius may wdl consent to
take a lower room. '

Let me now revert to the statement that the
design of this picture is to exhibit the trans-
planting of a soldier — in other words, that it is
intended to represent the grafting of military
qualities into the Church of Christ. At first
sight this is the last kind of transference which
could have been thought an object of desire.
We can understand very well how the qualities
of the domestic servant should be carried over
into the many mansions of the Father's house,
for the qualities of the domestic servant are,
even in the houses of men, Divine virtues — gifts
of the grace of God. Obedience to duty, fidel-
ity, honesty, integrity, truthfulness, justice,
the absence of self-interest and of eye-service
— these are the qualities which mark the good
servant in the secular home, and these are the
qualities which stamp the good servant in the
household of faith. Christianity, as much as
life, is a state of dependence ; and the form of a
servant is required for both. But war — where
does tJiat find place in the precepts of Christ ! Is

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 301

He not the Prince of Peace ! Was not ' Peace '
the song over His cradle and the sigh of His
last farewell! Were not the makers of peace
to be called in a special sense the children of His
Father! Where is there room for Cornelius
here — for the soldier Cornelius ! There is
room for the man; but must he not lay aside
his sword and his helmet when he enters the
kingdom of Christ ! Surely the red flowers of
man's garden will not be transplanted into the
Garden of the Lord 1

Yes, they must and they shall. The demand
for such transplanting has been loud through
all the Christian ages. Why did the Medieval
Church initiate orders of sacred knighthood —
knights of the temple, knights of St. Mary,
knights of St. John ? It was because the Medi-
eval Church wanted a section of her sons to be
soldiers in spirit and to transfer the qualities of
war into the paths of peace. Why has our mod-
ern Christianity instituted a Salvation Army.?
It is because Cornelius is still needed among the
Christians — because in peace as well as in war
there are wrongs that await redressing. Why

302 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

does our twentieth century inaugurate in every
town a Boys' Brigade? It is because we want
Cornelius in the midst of us. It is because we
desire that from an early age our youthful gen-
eration should learn to associate religion with
manliness, to connect the cross of Christ with
all that is brave and heroic and noble, and to
plant in civil life those very seeds which in the
sphere of the warrior made for military glory.

The truth is, what Christian civilisation needs
in a time of peace is pre-eminently the presence
of Cornelius — the infusion of a military element.
We are apt to be ashamed in peace of that
which we laud in war. In men on the road to
battle we admire abstinence, temperance, cau-
tion, care of bodily health, the avoidance of any
temptation to any form of physical excess. We
count this manly; and why? Because the men
are under military orders. But when we see
these qualities in time of peace we are apt
to call them womanish; and why? Because
then the men are not supposed to be under
military orders, but to be simply timorous,
nervous, frightened. Yet, from the Christian

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 303

point of view, this is a mistake. The man is
as truly on the march in peace as in war, and
as truly under orders. We want him to feel
that. We want him to realise that in the com-
mon things of life he is on soldier's duty — bound
by a tie of honour, pledged by an oath of fealty,
dedicated to the service of a government whose
rule is over all nations. ' They shall beat their
swords into ploughshares and their spears into
pruning-hooks ' are the words in which is pro-
claimed the advent of the Prince of Peace. But
even in that proclamation there is a tribute paid
to the soldier. The old warlike material is not
to be thrown away; it is the sword that is to
become the ploughshare, it is the spear that is to
be made the pruning-hook. Cornelius the sol-
dier is not to be annihilated in the resurrection
of Cornelius the man. As he ascends in his
fiery chariot the military mantle is not to drop
from him. It is to be carried into the new
kingdom, to be worn in the new world, to be
illustrated in the new life. The sacrificial spirit
which animates the deeds of war is to be dis-
played again in the fields of peace.

304 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

As he enters the portals of the Christian life
Cornelius fades from our view; his form is lost
in the crowd, and we see him no more. But
though in visible presence he appears not, he
reappears in metaphor. Cornelius represents
and foreshadows the conquest of Rome by
Christ. Viewed in this typical aspect, we do
meet him again. Nearly three centuries after,
we see his conversion repeated in the conver-
sion by Christianity of the empire itself. There
stands Cornelius once more — calling on Peter
to help him ! There he stands — wielding the
military sceptre, but surrendering the sceptre
of the heart ! There he stands — embodying in
converted Rome a union of his own three ex-
periences! His original Paganism is there —
heathen rites are baptised into Christian wor-
ship. His subsequent Judaism is there — a God
is recognised who is holy but hard to be en-
treated, flawless but far away. His final Chris-
tianity is there — the cross has become the
watchword of all life and the symbol of all
power. And the retention of his soldier-heart
is there — with the garment of Christ Rome has

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 305

put on a fresh military robe. She has increased
her fearlessness; she has augmented her forti-
tude; she has strengthened her power of en-
durance; she has deepened her determination;
she has quickened her loyalty; she has fanned
her enthusiasm ; she has sharpened her sense of
duty ; she has almost created her spirit of chiv-
alry. The sword has survived in the plough-
share, the spear in the pruning-hook.

LORD, fit me for the ranks of Thine army!
Put Thy best robe upon me — the soldier's
robe! Give me Thy truly military spirit — the
spirit that casteth out fear — love ! Fit me for
the times of waiting! I am more afraid of the
silence than the conflict. Often have I said in
the old time, ' If I could get away from the
world, I could put off my armour. ' Often have
I thought, ' If I could leave the scenes of tempta-
tion and could rest in some quiet, secluded spot,
I might lay aside the soldier's garb.' And lo!
when I tried it, I found that I must add to my
armour. I found that the scene of temptation
is not outside of me but within me, that the bat-

3o6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

tlefield is the silent field. I need Thee niost,
my Father, when I am meeting with myself. I
could perform a sacrifice amid the crowd because
I feel that the crowd would applaud me for it.
But when Thou hast sent the multitude away,
when there are no spectators of my struggle,
when the flags wave not, the banners stream not,
the trumpets blow not, when I am alone in the
field with my own will, it is then I need Thine
armour, O my God. It is comparatively easy
to wrestle after daybreak, for the daybreak dis-
tracts me from myself. But before the day
breaks, I am alone — alone with myself, alone
with my erring soul. Arm me, O Lord, arm me
for the great battle where there fights but one!
Give me a sword for the solitude, a spear for
the silence, a helmet for the hermitage, a
breastplate for the breathless air! Quicken me
for the quiet, fortify me for the fireside, nerve
me for the night, strengthen me for the study,
warm me for the woodland ramble, inspire me
for the inland calm I Let me wear my armour iA
life's placid hour!

CHAPTER XV

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED

There are some who have professed to read
the character by the handwriting. In the case
of Timothy we have a task more difficult still;
it is to read the character of one man by the
handwriting of another. Nearly all we can
gather of the inner life of Timothy is wrapped
up within two brief letters addressed to him
by Paul. They are really a ministerial charge
containing practical advices and cautions to Tim-
othy on his appointment to the pastorate of the
Church at Ephesus. Are we entitled to take
these advices and cautions as indicating Paul's
sense of Timothy's weak points.? I think we
are. When Paul writes a letter it is always a
characteristic letter — characteristic, I mean, of
the person or persons written to. When he

writes to the residents in Rome, he exhibits
307

3o8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Christ as * the power unto salvation ' — ^and why ?
Because the dweller in that military city was
apt to think Christianity a form of weakness.
When he writes to the Corinthians, he exhib-
its Christ as wisdom — and why? Because to
the Greek Christianity appeared foolishness.
When he writes to the Galatians, he tells them
to be not weary in well-doing — and why.?
Because they had revealed themselves as fickle.
When he writes to Philemon, it is to guide him
in a personal affair — an affair in which he had
temptation to show harshness. Nay, when he
writes to Timothy himself on a physical matter,
his advice is professedly dictated by a sense of
Timothy's infirmity — 'Take a little wine for
your stomach's sake.' I conclude therefore
that, as the physical advice was prompted by
Paul's knowledge of a physical weakness, the
mental advice was prompted by his knowledge
of a mental weakness ; and I feel authorised to
use these letters as a biographical mirror in
which the secrets of the life are revealed and
the heart of the man is spread out before us.
Timothy could have started life with the

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 309

motto, ' Two worlds are mine. ' He was bom
probably at Lystra — a city of Lycaonia. With-
in him was the blood of two opposite heredities.
His mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois
were Jewish Christians of the most pious and
devoted type. That stream of heredity from
the blood of Israel was, however, counteracted
by another stream. If his mother was a Jew,
his father was a Greek — of what religious per-
suasion we know not. Timothy was therefore
the child of opposite worlds, and it was inevit-
able that they should strive within him. Israel
and Greece were essentially opposed currents.
Their difference lay deeper than any religious
doctrine; it was constituted by their view of
life. The Jew aimed at the repression of na-
ture ; the object of the Greek was to give nature
full play. The Jew encouraged the sense of
obligation; the Greek fostered the thought of
spontaneity. The Jew looked upon the uni-
verse with awe ; the Greek viewed it as a pleas-
ure-ground. The Jew uncovered his head in
the presence of Divine mysteries; the Greek
made them subjects of daring speculation. It

3IO THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

was evident that the main danger to Timothy lay
on the Greek side. Where Judaism embraced
Christianity it was sternly Christian; where
Greece favoured Christianity its affection was
apt to be divided. Probably in the mind of
the father Christianity had not passed the stage
of a mere favourable recognition. The age of
' many gods ' was past ; but the age of ' many
systems ' had taken its place, and the father of
Timothy in all likelihood leant towards each in
turn. It was not altogether a propitious nest
for the maturing of a steady wing.

In the home, however, the mother seems to
have had her own way. She brought up the
child in the faith of Christ and under the in-
fluence of her pious example. He seems to
have been early put to active service in the
cause of Christianity. When Paul on his mis-
sionary journey came to Lystra and first saw
him, he was exceedingly young; yet he was al-
ready talked of as a helper in the work. Paul
was greatly struck wth him. He discerned the
promise and the potency of a high and useful life
which was worth fostering into bloom. He re-

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 311

solved to train him under his own eye. Doubt-
less he recognised the danger of the counter-
acting Greek current in his blood and in his
home, and thought the removal from his home
might modify the action of his blood. Accord-
ingly, he took Timothy with him. He took
him as a pupil — one to be trained for higher
service. But when next we meet him he is no
longer Paul's pupil; he is his companion. He
has not indeed entered into the place of part-
nership vacated by BatJiabas. It was rather an
association of love than of business, and that
kind of love which bridges the separation of
those divided by a gulf of years. The older
man felt himself a protector; the younger
clung to his support. Paul realised that he had
adopted this youth, become sponsor for him in
the eye of heaven. He felt that he was respon-
sible for his eternal welfare — that he had to sup-
ply the place which the good mother had filled
and which the indifferent father ought to have
filled. A flower had been committed to him in
the Garden of the Lord; that flower he had
to water every morning and nurture every day.

312 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

"Was there a possibility that the relation of
Paul and Timothy might ever be reversed —
that Timothy might become the protector and
Paul the recipient? There vi'ould have been,
but for one circumstance. It was this — Paul
was never able to realise that Timothy was
growing older. He insisted on always viewing
him as the lad he met in Lystra. On that
occasion Timothy was probably about twenty
years of age. That was an exceedingly young
man to have gained a local reputation among
the Christians; and we could have understood
Paul saying at that time, ' Let no man despise
thy youth.' But he says it some fifteen years
afterwards — when Timothy must have passed
youth's despicable stage. The words were
spoken near the end of Paul's life. He had
gone through most of his crisis-moments. He
had been imprisoned in Caesarea. He had made
his appeal to Caesar. He had been shipwrecked
on his voyage to Rome. He had been acquitted
by a Roman tribunal. He had resumed his
missionary labours, and, as a final act in them,
he had ordained Timothy to the Church of

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 313

Ephesus. He had returned to Rome. He
had been imprisoned once more — in that dun-
geon from which he was only to issue through
the gate of death. It was from that final cap-
tivity that he wrote his pastoral counsels to his
friend of long years. And it is then most of
all that he seems to forget the years. He sees
Timothy, not as he is, but as he was. He ig-
nores the fifteen winters whose storms have
swept across his brow and whose chills have
furrowed his cheek. He sees him in his home
at Lystra in all the freshness of life's morning.
He sees him between two fires — the fire of de-
votion to his mother and the fire of admiration
for his father. He sees the struggle of his
young heart between the Jew and the Greek —
between the surrender of will and the specula-
tion of intellect. He feels that the same con-
flict is raging in the world still — nowhere more
than at Ephesus, and that the whole current
must be breasted by an inexperienced boy. In
words which are pathetic in their loss of the
sense of time he cries, * Let no man despise thy
youth. '

314 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

But have we never seen anything like this out-
side of the New Testament! Is it not a matter
of daily observation! Do we not know that
those who have been the guardians of the young
find it very hard to realise their adolescence!
I knew an elderly woman who always spoke of
her brothers as * these boys. ' There was not
one of them under fifty years of age; but she
had been as a mother to them in youth and
she realised not that their youth was gone. It
is always the tendency of love to clothe its
object with permanence. It is told of St. John
that, when an old man, he stood in the streets
of Ephesus and cried, ' Little children, love one
another ! ' Probably the * little children ' were
nearly as old as himself; but they had been
brought up as pupils in his Bible-class and he
felt to them as a father. His love was too strong
to observe the growing shadow on the dial;
it saw the objects of its morning in the same
perpetual youth as that in which the Christian
saw his Christ — unchanged yesterday and to-
day and for ever. Paul, too, had an illusion in the
streets of Ephesus; he took a man to be a boy.

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 315

It was love's cry for permanence. It was the
protest of the heart for the continuance of the
morning. It was the desire of the spirit that time
should write no wrinkle on the azure brow of that
sea of life on which he had sailed long years ago.
Timothy, then, stood before the eye of Paul
in the garb of a young man. Paul felt that he
wanted discipline — that the flower within him
must be cultivated. It was not learning he
needed ; it was pruning. There are men whose
temptation comes from their ignorance; the
dangers of Timothy came from his knowledge,
his culture, his intellectual development. The
spirit of Greece was in him, and the spirit of
Greece was the spirit of independent thought.
Paul dearly loved to think of him as still young;
but he felt that his Greek blood made youth a
special danger. It was to youth that the seduc-
tions of Greece peculiarly appealed. Rome's
muscular vigour spoke to manhood; Judea's
restraining influence spoke to middle age; but
Greece with her morning radiance addressed
the spirit of youth and found her most power-
ful votaries in the children of the spring.

3i6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

Let me now proceed to indicate some of
those weak points of Timothy's youth which
Paul by an act of imagination transferred to
his riper age. You will find that they will open
up to every man a chapter of autobiography
and that the weak points of young Timothy are
the weak points which are apt to beset the youth
of all men. Now, Paul is very emphatic as
to the charge which in importance he would
place first. It is not the charge which we
should expect him to place first. If we were ad-
dressing one whom we thought of as a young
man and whom we believed to be under special
temptation, we should begin by warning him
against flagrant sins — against the excesses of
the wine-cup, the excesses of the gaming-table,
the excesses of human passion. Paul does not
start with any of these; he tells Timothy first
and foremost to cherish a reverent spirit towards
those in authority! Is not this a strange ad-
vice to put in the front ground of a young man's
discipline. I do not think so. I think it would
be the advice which in actual youth Timothy
first needed. What is the root of youth's dan-

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 317

gers? It is the resistance to authority. I do
not mean the resistance to any particular au-
thority, but to the principle of authority itself.
A young man tends to love the fruit because it
is forbidden. The fruit in itself is often dis-
tasteful to him. Command young Adam to
climb the tree of knowledge, and he will prob-
ably refuse ; forbid him, and that tree will become
an object of desire. Youth oftener goes wrong
from a false ideal of manliness than from any
love of vice. To be free, to be independent,
to do what one likes, to reveal the magnificent
example of *I don't care,' to be pointed out as
a bold, reckless spirit that fears not the face
of man — that is the ideal which swims before
the eye of youth and draws it into all perils.

When Paul first met Timothy everything in
the young man's blood tempted to the resist-
ance of authority. His youth tempted him, for
youth loves to feel itself free. His Greek de-
scent tempted him, for Greece had ever as-
pired to be free. And, strange to say, it must
be added that his Christianity itself tempted him.
It sounds curious to hear Paul exhort Timothy

3i8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

to pray for kings. We should have thought the
charge would be, ' Pray for the poor and desti-
tute. ' But we forget that by the early Christian
it was the kings, and not the destitute, who
were apt to be neglected. The typical primitive
Christian looked down upon his temporal rulers.
He held that the humble classes were the privi-
leged classes. What he extended to the rich
was at most only a patronage. It was not nat-
ural that he should pray first for kings. He
was a subject of no king but one — the Lord
Jesus. The rulers of the world were in posses-
sion of a mock dignity — a dignity which be-
longed, not to them, but to Him. Why should
he pray for their wise governing! Was not
their government, whether wise or unwise, an
obstacle in the march of the King of kings!
Had not he a higher allegiance — the allegiance
to another world, to a coming world, to a world
before whose blaze of glory all the thrones and
principalities and powers of earth must wither
away! The kings of the nations might take
tribute from his hand; they could get no trib-
ute from his soul.

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 319

So in all likelihood thought young Timothy
in the days when Paul first met him ; and Paul
transfers his youth to his riper years. He
warns him that he is on a quicksand. He tells
him to dismiss his contempt for the higher seats
of this world. He tells him that, whether they
know it or not, the rulers of earth are God's
ministers. He tells him that, whether they
know it or not, they are responsible for the bear-
ing of a great burden. He tells him that, by
reason of this burden, they are objects not for
anger but for reverent commiseration — that
they have more need to be prayed for than
the poor and destitute. He bids him pray for
them first of all; he bids him teach his peo-
ple to pray for them. It was a new call to sym-
pathy. Hitherto sympathy has been asked to
descend the ladder; it is now asked to go up —
to extend its charity to the high places of the
earth, to enter into the troubles of those who
sit in the upper room.

Let me pass now to a second advice given
by Paul to Timothy, or rather to a combination
of two advices often supposed to be contradic-

320 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

tory. He virtually tells him to avoid two kinds
of fast living — the fastness of brain and the fast-
ness of brainlessness. On the one hand he is
very anxious that as a pastor he should avoid
matters of intellectual speculation. On the
other he is equally solicitous that he should not
fritter away intellect altogether by living for triv-
ialities and frivolities — ' Flee youthful desires ! '
he says. I have said that these two dangers
seem opposite — the one is over-thought, the
other is thoughtlessness. We think of the
former as a slow and quiet life, of the latter as
a life of fastness. The truth is, they are both
fast, and may be both equally fast. What do
we mean by fastness? Simply that too many
sensations are being crowded together in a small
space and in a short time. Physically speaking,
it matters not what the sensation be. You may
be a student living far from the works and ways
of men, dwelling in seclusion and solitude, ab-
staining from the whole round of worldly pleas-
ure, never seen at fancy fete or fashionable ball,
and yet you may be living as fast a life as if you
were spending your days in a whirl of gaiety.

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 321

It is the number and the rapidity of your sensa-
tions, and not their moral character, that deter-
mine the rate at which you are traveUing.

Now, it is more than likely that Timothy in
his young days was under both of these tempta-
tions. Does it seem to us that both could not
exist in the same mind — that the one would serve
as a counteraction to the other. We forget that
this is the very thing which makes their exist-
ence in one mind possible. Who, according to
the Jewish Scriptures, is the man most taken up
with the frivolities of life.? Of all people, it
is Solomon — the profound student, the deep
scholar, the speculative thinker, the man who
filled the world with the fame of his wisdom ! I
used to wonder at the incongruous combination.
I see now that it is true to human nature. The
typical Solomon is ever the most in danger of
becoming frivolous. He needs a reaction. His
mind has been on the wing round the stars; it
will by and by be on the wing round the candle.
He has been revolving the problems of eternity ;
he will before long revolve in the dance of the
hour. It is the very cry for a counteracting in-

31

322 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

fluence that drives him from fervour to frivol-
ity.

You will observe where Paul places frivolity;
it is in the 'desires.' I do not suppose he was
in the least afraid of Timothy's outward morals;
I am quite sure he had no cause to be. But
Paul did not think this a sufficient ground of
safety. If he had been told of Timothy's ex-
ternal purity, he would still have cried, * Flee
youthful desires ! ' The frivolous man was to
Paul the man who desired frivolous things.
The fast man in moral life was he whose heart
was crowded with images of vanity and with
forms of sensual mould. The contact which
Paul feared for Timothy was an inward contact.
He dreaded no company for a man like the com-
pany of his own unregenerate heart; there was
his place of temptation, there was his scene of
danger. The frivolities of life were in each
man's soul, and to cherish these in the soul was
already to yield to temptation.

I will mention one other advice of Paul to
Timothy — more directly pastoral than those pre-
ceding, yet dictated like these by the apostle's

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 323

memory of the pupil's youth. He tells him
to be a workman ' rightly dividing the word
of truth. ' The great temptation of young min-
isters is to view the word of truth in a single
aspect. Paul says it ought to be 'divided' —
given out in portions according to the needs of
the recipient. The youthful pastor is apt to
address perpetually one class. One such pastor
has a philosophic cast; another is evangelical;
a third is purely practical — so we often sum
up the special qualities of the preacher. Paul
would say that each of the three was in fault
through not 'dividing' the word of truth. He
would say that one man should combine them
all. He will probably have in his congregation
representatives of all. The philosopher will be
there — studying the mysteries of being. The
evangelical will be there — inquiring the way of
salvation. The moralist will be there — seeking
the path of duty. Paul would say, ' Divide the
word of truth — speak to each in turn. ' To him
the pastoral life is a sacrificial life in which a
man ought to put himself in sympathy with
the limits of his congregation — to conceive his

324 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

subject, not as it appears to him^ but as it
must appear to different modes of mind. He
must empty himself of his own predilections
— must think with the thoughts of others. He
must see deeply with the student, simply with
the children, practically with the workers and toil-
ers. He must give to each, not his own favour-
ite portion, but the portion to which each is
suited. He must not descant on Dives and Laz-
arus at the bedside of an invalid, nor expound
the case of the ten virgins to a penitent seek-
ing rest. He must be appropriate — which lit-
erally means, he must give to every one his own.
That is the right ' dividing ' of the word of truth.
Now, Paul may have observed in Timothy's
youth a tendency to this one-sidedness. There
was everything to favour its existence. The
Greek blood within him made for it in one di-
rection; the Jewish blood within him made for
it in another. The spirit of youth itself fa-
voured it. Youth is ever apt to be one-sided,
and therefore inappropriate. Young people
tend to say the thing unsuited to a particular
occasion, and they do so simply because they

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 325

are one-sided. The cure for them, the cure for
Timothy, the cure for all of us, is Christianity
— the power to stand in the place of another.
That is what makes the religion of Christ differ
alike from the Gentile and the Jew; it can in-
corporate itself in the sympathies of both. It
can divide a portion of the soul between either
combatant, and therefore can beat with the
heart of each. The imitation of Christ is the
imitation of one who emptied himself, who
clothed himself in the likeness of others, who
strove to live in the experience of those beneath
him. Only in the effort to follow this life can
man avoid the partialities of the Gentile and
the Jew.

There is one little point to which I should
like to direct attention. Did you ever ask your-
self why it is that before administering this
discipline to Timothy Paul himself assumes such
a humble attitude .-' Instead of opening with
a tone of authority, he begins his letter by tell-
ing Timothy what a miserable creature he him-
self had been — a blasphemer, a persecutor, an
injurer of men, a man who for his present posi-

326 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

tion was entirely indebted to the mercy of God.
And can you fail to see why Paul begins by
taking the lowest room? It was in accordance
with his own sublime exhortation, * If a man be-
overtaken in a fault, restore such a one in the
spirit of meekness. ' He means, in other words,
* Do not address him from a lordly height ; let
him see that you too have tripped in your day. '
That is what Paul wanted Timothy to see. He
did not wish the pupil to look upon him as a
demi-god. He knew that the basis of all teach-
ing is sympathy, and that sympathy demands
a common experience. He comes to Timothy,
not in his latest robes, but in his original rags.
He speaks to him, not from the top of the lad-
der, but from its base. He pleads with him,
not as one who was born to angelic purity and
has never breathed the air of evil, but as one
who has known corruption, who has felt tempta-
tion, who has touched sin, who has learned the
pain of struggle, and who even now is unable to
ascribe his salvation to any merit of his own.
The discipline from such a man has strength,
but no sting.

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 327

LORD, when I go to discipline my brother-
man, let me remember his environment !
Let me remember Timothy's youth, and that
the passions of youth are strong! Let me re-
member his Greek blood that cries for novelty
in every form — that flies to-day on the wings of
fancy, to-morrow on the pinions of pleasure!
Let me remember his Pagan influences, and
how many voices in the Garden urge him to
climb the tree ! Let me remember, above all,
my own youth, my own heredity, my own first
surroundings I When I visit my erring brother,
let me put on my garment of yesterday! Let
me not go to him wearing that best robe which
Thou hast brought forth for me, and display-
ing that bright ring which claims me as Thy
child ! Let me fold Thy fair garment and lay
it by ; let me take off Thy bright ring and put
it aside! Bring me the mean attire of my
morning! Bring me the squalid garb in which
first I met Thee ! Bring me the tattered rags
in which of old I stood before Thy door! I
will go to my brother, clothed in the likeness
of sinful flesh. I will go to him with ringless

328 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

hands, with shoeless feet, with prideless gait.
I will go to him and say, * I come to thee from
thine own valley — from humiliation kindred to
thine. I too have been among the swine. I
too have been a child of the famine. I too
have been content to feed on the husks for a
time. By no merit of mine am I saved; while
I was yet afar off my Father saw me. Receive
thy hope from me, thy comfort from me, thine
example from me! Learn from my rags thy
possible riches ! See in my meanness thy possi-
ble majesty! Behold in my lowliness thy pos-
sible ladder! Read in my corruption thy possi-
ble crown! So, on the stepping-stones of my
dead self, may'st thou rise to higher things.'

CHAPTER XVI

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED

In the chapters on Barnabas, Mark, and Tim-
othy I have alluded to many of the outward
incidents in the life of Paul. I do not intend
to traverse these lines again. I do not intend
to traverse any historical lines. And for this
reason: The difference between Paul and the
other figures of the Gallery is not an outward
difference. If you look at him merely in the
external acts of his life, you will find nothing
that marks him out as a man of unique experi-
ence. I do not know of any historical fact in
Paul's experience which I am not prepared to
parallel with the experience of those already
considered. Did Paul reject Christ; so, for
a moment, did Peter. Did Paul miraculously
escape from prison; so also did Peter. Did

Paul suffer shipwreck; so, to an equal extent,
329

330 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

did Peter. Did Paul turn a somersault; so did
John. Did Paul write compositions of the most
divers kinds ; so did John. Did Paul receive a
vision of heavenly things; so did John. Was
Paul suddenly convinced of the power of Jesus;
so was Thomas. I could multiply parallels
almost indefinitely to show that the outward
life of the Gentile apostle is not essentially dis-
tinct from the lives of his fellow-Christians.
What distinguishes Paul is an experience from
within — an illumination from the spirit, the ris-
ing of an inner sun. It is the fact that this
man after conversion did the same kind of work
which he had been doing before, and that yet
by an added light in his soul he found it to be
wholly new. His work as Saul of Tarsus was
the building of a temple ; his work as Paul the
Apostle was the building of a temple too. Yet,
what he felt was not uniformity but difference,
contrast, revolution. Outwardly he was engaged
in the old things ; but in the very act he was
constrained to cry, * Old things are passed
away. ' Whence came this paradox ? From what
he himself calls a shining in the heart. The

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 331

change was in the region of the spirit. Sun
and moon and stars remained the same; moun-
tain, river, and stream abode in their wonted
place; but within his soul a new presence had
arisen, and by its potency and power every ob-
ject of his past was transformed and glorified.

The crisis hour of Paul's life was his transi-
tion from Judaism into Christianity. What
was that transition.'' We are so familiar with
the fact that we are apt to forget what it repre-
sents. What is the spiritual difference between
the Jew and the Christian.'' It is easy to state
the doctrinal difference; but that of the spirit
lies deeper. Let me try to exhibit the con-
trast in the iorm of a little parable.

A certain father had two boys whom he was
very desirous to bring up good. He thought
this would best be accomplished by inuring
them to a habit of life. Accordingly, he made
a proposal to them. He promised to give each
of them a penny for every hour of the day
in which they should abstain from doing any
bad action. As the sleeping hours were in-
evitably included in such a bargain, it was real-

332 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

ly an offer to each of two shillings a day for
total abstinence from wicked deeds. The elder
brother accepted the proposal with alacrity;
the younger refused — he preferred his freedom.
The elder brother got the name of being virtuous.
He did not, indeed, uniformly make his two
shillings, for there was always some hour of
some day in which he transgressed; but out of
each day he always gathered something. The
younger, on the other hand, was deemed reck-
less, careless, godless ; hardly an hour passed in
which he had not his hand in something wrong.
The one brother was called the man of God,
the other the man of Satan.

But in process of time a thing happened which
made one section of the community change its
mind. The brothers chanced one day to pass a
picture in a shop window — it was that of a man
walking through the scenes of a malignant pes-
tilence in the sheer hope of alleviating human
pain. The elder brother looked at the picture
with indifference. The younger gazed, lifted
up his hands and cried, ' I believe in that man ;
that is the man I should like to serve, should

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 333

like to follow, should like to imitate.' And the
bystander said : * It is this younger brother
that deserves the prize. Incorrect as his life
comparatively is, though there is not an hour
in which he does not commit faults to which his
brother is a stranger, he has yet reached in one
thought, in one aspiration, in one admiring look,
a height which through all the laborious days
that brother has never climbed.'

Now, the elder brother of this parable is the
Jew ; the younger is the Christian. The former
makes the attempt to count his deeds of absti-
nence. The latter keeps no reckoning of his
deeds; but in his room there hangs a picture
of surpassing beauty — a picture he has bought
and on which he gazes continually; it is the
description of an act of love by which a Divine
spirit gave his life for the world. The difference
between the Jew and the Christian is the dif-
ference between the tied hand and the winged
mind. It is quite possible that the force of
outward law may keep a man all his life from in-
juring his neighbour; yet such a man will be
no nearer to the beauties of holiness than had

334 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

he been living in a state of open war. But
suppose that, instead of tying his hands, you
liberated his heart, suppose that, instead of par-
alysing him with fear, you quickened him with
a sense of beauty, suppose that you confronted
him, not with the penalties of doing harm, but
with a picture of doing good, you would give him
in a moment the door of access into a purity
which all the years of his mere moral abstinence
have failed to reveal to his sight. The picture
on v/hich he would look would be beyond his
present strength; and he would .jnow it to
be so. But none the less it would be the true
measure of the man, the prophecy of his com-
ing self, the foreshadowing of that height which
he is destined to win.

Let us return for a moment to the parable
of the two boys. I have indicated that the by-
standers take different sides. Some go with
the elder brother who keeps the laborious hours ;
others adhere to the younger who gazes on the
beautiful picture. Now, Paul at first sided with
the former class. He thought that the promised
sum ought to be given to the boy who made

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 335

himself a drudge. He was very angry with
the seductive picture which had seemed to open
up a short and easy way. He was so angry that
he could not keep away from it. He wanted to
see where its power of seduction lay — to study
it that he might refute it. So he went daily to
look at the picture, and gazed on it with an ad-
verse eye. But, as he looked, there happened a
strange thing — the picture crept into his soul.
He had sought to find the secret of its power
with the view of refuting it. He did find the
secret of its power; but it refuted him. The
gaze of anger was transmuted into a gaze of
rapture. He was conquered by the spectacle
of moral purity. He saw a spotless soul walk-
ing amid the dread pestilence of sin — treading
the infected streets, touching the unclean gar-
ments, breathing the deadly vapours, nursing
the stricken patients, haunting the scenes of
horror from which the world had fled, and at
last sinking exhausted by the wayside and pur-
chasing the hfe of others by the sacrifice of his
own. All this Paul saw, and for the first time
there woke within him a sense of what sin really

336 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

was, what purity really was, what the service
of God really was. In one instant he rose far
above all the steps he had been climbing for
years. By one thought, by one vision, by one
sight of an ideal man, he reached a height which
a thousand acts had failed to win. He said :
* I believe in that man — he expresses all that
I should like to be. Will not this be God's
measure of me, God's estimate of me, the
standard of judgment by which God will see
my capacities for good ! Will He not test me
for the time to come, not by what I am, but
by what I wish to be ! '

This was the moment of Paul's illumination.
It was the moment in which there entered into
his soul the one love of his life — the only pas-
sion which ever stirred his heart. Christ has
appealed to men in many ways — sometimes in
fear, sometimes in reverence, sometimes in spec-
■ulation, sometimes in the sense of protection.
To Paul He is exclusively an object of love.
Every other phase of thought is absorbed in
that one. He tells us so himself. In that mag-
nificent hymn of his which will live as long as

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED ' 337

the Christian ages, he sings not only the ever-
lastingness but the predominance of love.
He sings how in his own experience all virtues
have 7nelted into love — how faith has faded
into its certainty, how prophecy has died in its
fulfilment, how knowledge has yielded to its
light. The inward history of Paul is the history
of his love — the history of that process by which
love filled all things.' This, from an artistic
point of view, is the real interest of the apos-
tle's life. His missionary journeys interest the
evangelist, his doctrinal system attracts the
theologian; but what distinguishes him to
the eye of the artist is that gradual process of
illumination through which, step by step and
sphere by sphere, every part of the universe
was lit up, until the world became to him ' the
fulness of Him that filleth all in all.'

I have spoken of Paul's illumination as a
gradual process. I should like to explain what
I mean by this. I do not think that after his

' Love came to Paul as self-enlightenment, to John as
self-surrender ; Paul never needed self -surrender — at no
time did he live for himself.
22

338 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

conversion Paul ever changed his mind on a mat-
ter of doctrine — his faith in Christ was as strong
at the beginning as it was at the end. Nor
do I think that Paul's actual love for Christ
went through any modification ; it began per-
haps unconsciously, and was revealed to himself
suddenly, but from that time I think it never
varied. When I speak, however, of a gradual
process in Paul, I mean, not an enlargement
of his love, but an enlargement of its sphere.
These two things are quite distinct. A child's
love for his father may be perfect without being
perfectly illuminating. It may be an isolated
and isolating love — may keep him from seeing
the beauty and acknowledging the real attrac-
tions of the other persons around him. Illu-
mination is not the heating but the lighting
process. Paul's love to Christ was as perfect
when he wrote to the Thessalonians as when he
penned his letters to Timothy; but it was less
far-seeing, or, to speak more accurately, it shed
less light upon surrounding things. The tri-
umph of love is not the amount of its passion ; it
is the number of things which it irradiates. The

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 339

development of Paul is not a deepening of con-
viction, not a progress in doctrine, not an inten-
sifying of emotion, not a growth in the spirit
of sacrifice; it is an enlargement of the sphere
of love. He says himself that his Christ was
destined to fill all things within his universe.
And so He was; but the process was not an
instantaneous one. Paul did not at once see
all things subject to Him. At first his Christ
seemed to dwell apart from the world and to
be sharply divided from the world. Step by
step the barriers were broken down, and, as each
barrier fell, the light ran over. Field was added
to field where the Divine Presence could walk in
the cool of the day, till, in the fulness of Paul's
experience, the world on every side was ' bound
by gold chains about the feet of God. '

What is the common process of love's en-
largement? Take a human love; take what
we generally term romantic love. What are
the stages through which it is wont to pass.-* I
think there are four. At first it is a hope —
something to be realised to-morrow. Then it
is a present possession, but reserved as yet

340 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

only for garden hours when we are free from the
bustle of the crowd. By and by its range is
widened — it becomes a stimulus for the great
duties of life; it comes out from the garden
into the city; it nerves to do and to bear. At
last it reaches its climax — it comes down to
trifles. It glorifies the commonplace; it finds
sermons in stones and sonnets in the dust. Lit-
tle things are magnified; unromantic things
are glorified. We do prosaic work. We per-
form menial duties. We go through cheerful
drudgery. We pluck thorns instead of flowers,
and smile at the pain. The latest stage of
love's enlargement is when it touches the
things on the ground.

And this is the order in the enlargement of
Pauls love. How do we know this.? Because
we have in our possession a copy of his love-
letters. They form a series stretching over
some fifteen or sixteen years. If we cannot
always point to their exact date, we can tell
at least the order in which they come. And
as we study them in this light we make a dis-
covery. We find that the series is a series of

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 341

milestones. The letters of Paul are a pro-
gressive history. They describe the onward
march of his love — and none the less effective-
ly because they do it unconsciously. You may
not trace landmarks in his theology. As you
travel from the Thessalonians to the Corinthians,
from the Corinthians to the Ephesians, from
the Ephesians to the Pastorals, you may not be
able to point to a spot in which a new doc-
trine has taken the place of the old. But there
is one thing you can see — the bird is flying over
a larger field. The bird is love. Its wings have
not increased in strength, its plumage is not
more beautiful, its flight is not more high; but
its range is wider over the earthly plain. The
history of love's enlargement in Paul is identical
with the history of its enlargement in you. He
reaches the goal of freedom by the same road.
There are no two kinds of love where love is
pure. Paul's devotion to his Christ was not
different in essence from your devotion to an
earthly friend; and the enlargement of his de-
votion to his Christ followed the same steps
which enlarge the compass of your human devo-

342 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

tion. Christ is to him first the object who is
coming, then the object that is already in the
soul, then the object that gives strength for
the world, and lastly the object which has glori-
fied the things once deemed insignificant and
trivial. Let us glance at each of these.

When Paul's love for Christ first rose, it rose
as a hope. Like romantic love, it presented it-
self as the prospect of to-morrow. Christ was
coming — He would change all things, would
beautify all things. This present system did
not represent Him ; but this present system was
ready to vanish away. ' It is not here, ' he cries
to the Thessalonians, ' that you can expect to
see Christ's glory; His glory can only ap-
pear in the transformation of the world. He
is coming to transform, to purify, to brighten.
It is true, some of you are expecting Him too
soon. The world has not yet thoroughly re-
vealed its badness; it is kept in check by the
laws of the Roman empire. But the time is
coming when that empire shall be crushed and
broken ; then the passions of men shall be loosed
and you will learn your need of God's morning.

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 343

Your hope is in the future; your sun is in to-
morrow's sky; your dawn is in the coming
day.'

Remember, the Christ whom Paul first saw
was the Christ in heaven. He never gazed
upon the man of Galilee. His earliest vision
was the vision of a Jesus glorified. Not on the
road to the cross did Christ meet him ; He
came to him panoplied in heavenly splendour.
What his inner eye beheld was the Christ of
the future — a Christ of majesty, a Christ of
power, a Christ who came clothed in the light-
ning and wreathed in the conqueror's robe.
That was the first Christian image in Paul's
soul. Is it wonderful that it should have been
the first Christian image in his writings ! Is
it wonderful that his earliest note of missionary
music should be ' Jesus and the Resurrection ' !
Is it wonderful that at first his love should look
forward instead of either back or around —
should begin, neither with memory nor with
fruition, but with an act of hope! The being
whom he loved had come to him as a prospect,
not as a possession. He had flashed before

344 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

him as an object to strive for, as a prize which
to-morrow was to win; and therefore within
the folds of to-morrow lay all his salvation
and all his desire.

But a second stage was coming ; you will find
it in the transition from Athens to Corinth.
Up to the time when he reached the summit of
Mars Hill he had preached Christ and the Res-
urrection— the Christ behind the veil. But af-
ter his descent from Mars Hill his love found
a new sphere. He began to think, not of the
Christ in the heavens, but of the Christ in
the soul. There broke upon him the convic-
tion that even in this world there might be a
little green spot where he could meet with Je-
sus. There was a garden plot on earth which
was not of earth — the region of the human
spirit. Thither he might retire betimes and be
at peace. Within the scene of turmoil there
might be a moment of supreme joy, a place
of placid rest, a bower in whose sweet retire-
ment the burden and the heat might be for-
gotten and where the soul could revel in com-
munion with the object of its love.

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 345

Here, then, Paul's love has reached a higher
stage of illumination; it has found a place
within the present world. But the world itself
to the eye of Paul has not yet been illuminated
— it only contains a spot where illumination is
possible. That spot is thoroughly fenced in;
the common round of life enters not within
its precincts. What is Paul's attitude towards
the world at this time? It has been described
as an adverse one. I would define it rather as
one of indifference. He is in that stage of
love in which everything is ignored but the gar-
den— the place of meeting with its object. His
language towards the outside is not that of en-
mity but simply of uninterestedness. He does
not condemn marriage; he says it is a matter
of no consequence whether one is married or
single. He does not condemn merchandise;
he says that buying and selling are things of
no religious moment. He does not condemn
the use of life's good things; he says that he
has entered into a joy which to him personally
would make the using of them or the refraining
from them a question of absolute unimportance

346 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

— these things have lost their glory by reason
of an all-excelling glory. A young woman of
my acquaintance asked a revival preacher if he
thought there was any harm in dancing; the
answer was, * I do not see how you can find
time.' I think that at this period such would
have been Paul's reply to any one asking whether
in the light of Christ he was entitled to take
part in worldly pleasures; he would have said,
'The time is short.' To his mind it was not
so much that Christ opposed anything as that
He dwarfed everything. He eclipsed to Paul
even the glories of nature. Men have wondered
at his silence on physical beauty; some have
explained it by the theory that the thorn in his
flesh was blindness. It may have been. But,
to account for Paul's silence about physical
beauty, we need no thorn. It came from his
flower. There was a presence in the air which
to him put out sun and moon and star. It
struck him blind, not by darkness, but by light.
It dimmed the skies by its glory. It withered
the flowers by its radiance. It lowered the
mountains by its majesty. It supplanted eye

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 347

and ear, and reigned in their stead. The world's
beauty to Paul was crucified in Jesus.

I come to the third stage in the illumination
of Paul's love. Its birthplace was Caesarea and
within the walls of a prison.' Strange that
a prison should have been the scene of Paul's
enlargement! Yet, paradoxical as it seems, it
was in prison that the world expanded to his
view. Here, for the first time, he saw Chris-
tianity through a telescope; and things which
he had deemed so far off as to be outside the
pale of Christ were brought so nigh as to be
recognised as parts of His kingdom. Christ
had already been recognised by Paul as the
head of the Church; but in that prison at
Caesarea He became more — the head of the
state, the head of all states. Within the walls
of that prison the Christian world burst the
boundaries Paul had assigned to it. The sec-
ular became sacred in its greater manifestations
— its appearance through the telescope. Hith-

' I have here followed the view of Meyer that the Epis-
tles to the Ephesians and the Colossians belong to the
Caesarean rather than to the Roman Captivity — though,
unlike him, I assign to Rome Philippians and Philemon.

348 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

erto in the apostle's mind the kingdom of
Christ had been limited to the sitters at the
communion-table. But here, as if by an open-
ing in the heavens, there was revealed a wider
empire of the Son of Man. He was no longer
merely the king of saints; He was the king of
kings — the head of principalities and powers.
The Church was no more a little garden walled
in from the outside world; the outside world
was itself the vestibule into the Church. All
kingdoms were Christ's kingdom; all history
was Church-history; all events among the na-
tions were events in the sphere of religion.
Paul began to see his Christ outside the limits
of Eden and apart from the trees of the Gar-
den. He had traced His hand in the breaking
of communion bread; he began to trace it in
the powers called natural — in the field of pol-
itics, in the field of war, in the field of litera-
ture, in the field of human eloquence. There
dawned upon him the conviction that salvation
might enter the soul by a secular door. If
Christ was the head of the state, if the state
as well as the Church was His embodiment,

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 349

then, in the service of the state, a man might
well feel that he was performing mission labour.
The politician in the very pursuit of his pol-
itics, the senator in the very exercise of his art,
the soldier in the very act of defending his
country, might claim to be evangelists. In
the light of such a thought as that, Paul might
well realise that his own profession was taken
by violence, and that the secular heroes of every
age could claim him as a brother.

Such was the illumination of Paul's love in
the sphere of the telescope. But what of its
illumination in the sphere of the microscope.
He had seen the sacredness of the state with
its mighty principalities and powers. But there
was an opposite to the state and its principal-
ities— the home and its commonplaces. This is
the last stage in the progress of romantic love.
It reaches every spot before that. It begins with
the future; then it finds in the present a se-
cret place where the world cannot come; then
it wreathes itself round the great things of the
world. All these Paul had passed through.
But the final stage remained — love's illumination

350 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

of those things of the world which were Ttot
great — the gilding of the commonplaces of home.
That also was coming. Already in the latest
sections of what I consider the Caesarean Epis-
tles we find traces of the idealising of home;
yet it does not there get the first place. It is
in Paul's last missionary journey that there
strikes the final hour of his spiritual pilgrim-
age. There, in his epistle to Titus, his love
reaches its final glory by reaching the ground.
There, for the first time, the subject from be-
ginning to end is the secular home-life of the
Christian congregation. To the eye of youth-
ful romance it is a most wingless letter. There
are no flights in the air, no speculations about
futurity, no expositions of Christian doctrine.
Their place is taken by home precepts — pre-
cepts for the hearth, precepts for the household,
precepts for the unity of the family bond. Each
generation is addressed in turn — the grand-
father and grandmother, the son and daughter,
the children of the son and the children of the
daughter; while even their relation to the do-
mestic servants is not forgotten. Yet, wingless

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 351

as the letter seems, it is really a proof that love's
wings are perfected. In the illumination of
home's prosaic duties the spirit of romance has
reached its utmost stretch of pinion. Its cli-
max is not the mount but the vale; its glory is
not the diamond but the dust. When Paul's
love had illuminated the commonplaces of home,
it might well break into the cry, * I have fought
a good fight, I have finished my course ; hence-
forth there is laid up for me a crown of glory. '

LORD, illuminate this world to me! Often
have I asked Thine illumination of the
spheres beyond; it seemed a harder thing to
light up heaven than to light up earth. But I
have found that I was wrong. It is for humble
things I most need Thy revealing. It is easy
for me to worship in the solemn hour of night
when the pulse of life is silent and the world's
tread beats low. It is easy for me to worship
when the sacred symbols are in my hand and
the sacred memories are in my soul. But the
clouds and darkness that are round about Thee
lie not in heaven's mysteries; they lie in earth's

352 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

shallows. It is bewildering to see Cana anxious
only about a deficiency in the feast when the
real problem is one of life and death ; it makes
me say, * Religion is unreal. ' Yet Thou hast
stooped to the shallows of Cana, Thou hast
thrown Thyself into sympathy with the wants
of children. I can find Thee, I can find Thy
cross, even in the land of trifles. Help me,
when there, to seek that cross! Help me to
repeat Thy sympathy with Cana ! Help me to
wade in the shallows with the child ! Help me
to remember needs that I have surmounted, to
respect desires that I have outgrown! Help
me to go down to the things I used to wish
for — to recall the claims of yesterday! Then
shall I be fervent even amid frivolities, true
even amid trifles. Christian even amid crudities.
Then shall I find pearls in the pool, gold in the
grass, sapphires in the snow, treasures in the
trodden way. Then shall Thy cross be planted
in its most unlikely soil — the place of worldly
pleasure, the ground which the trivial tread.
Love will have lighted her final torch when she
has illuminated the wants of Cana.

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